Category Archives: Evolution

Ayman Abu Odeh, who lives in Gaza, once had high hopes for Hamas. Like many Palestinians, the 50-year-old voted for the militant group and political party in the historic January 2006 election, out of protest more than ideology: Fatah, the secular faction that had dominated politics in the Palestinian territories for four decades, had become deeply corrupt, and a decade of negotiations with Israel had failed to produce a Palestinian state.

Life was comfortable enough before Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007 after a violent, six-day power struggle with Fatah. Abu Odeh used to own a cement mixer and made a good living in Gazas construction industrygood enough to build a three-story house in the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun. By the end of 2006, the cement mixer was gone, destroyed during an Israeli army incursion that followed Hamas capture of the soldier Gilad Shalit, who was released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange. Abu Odeh scraped out a living for a while as a laborer, but that work eventually dried up, and he now relies on charity. His two adult sons are both unemployed.

Abu Odehs house survived until the most recent war, in the summer of 2014. Then an Israeli shell demolished that, too. His family spent the following winter in an uninsulated trailer donated by the Moroccan governmentlike living in a freezer, he called it. His sisters family lives next door, in the two rooms of their home that survived the blast. They sleep on mattresses in the kitchen and worry that the gnarled structure above them will collapse. Electricity is out for most of the day; water comes by truck every third day. If you miss it, youre thirsty, he said.

Almost everyone in Gaza has a similar story. There was the woman at the Rafah border whose kidneys failed as she waited 15 months to cross into Egypt for medical treatment. Or the businessman who fired 80 percent of the staff at his factory because a

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The Evolution of Hamas - Foreign Affairs (subscription)

Mar 7, 2017; Oklahoma City, OK, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook (0) reacts after being fouled on a shot against the Portland Trail Blazers during the second quarter at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Views from OKC: Questions sprouting from last nights win by Tony Heim

The evolution of Semaj Christon by Matthew Hallett

Every decisionmade by a team in the NBA has a large effect on a teamand it will also likely have ripple effects. The effortby NBA teams to improve their decision making and gain an edge over other teams helped spark the analytics movement in the NBA.

Teams began to quantify anything and everything in an effort to determine the value of skills and players. They even started to create whole departments devoted to analytics. Eventually they would install the SportVu cameras in every arena, which track the location of all 10 players and the ball 25 times per second.

A similar movementbegan a few years ago with sports science.Teams are developing player specifics diets and workout routines among other things to increase players performance. Teams also began using wearable technologyto measure player performance to help improve it and prevent injury.

Related: Top Points from Adam Silver All-Star Press Conference

As wearable technology use became more prevalent in the NBA and research on the affects of sleep on performance advanced, the practice of resting seemingly healthy players started.

The movement has escalated to the point that NBA and the NBA Players Association (NBAPA) devoted a whole section (section 13 of Article 12) of the recently negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to forming a Wearables Committee and the use and security of the data generated by the wearable.

On Monday evening, Ramona Shelburne of ESPN reported that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver sent a memo to team owners about the practice of resting players. A problem that is getting more complex by the day.

Silver recognizes the complexity of this problem and the difficulty of finding a solution or a balance to the problem.He demonstrated this at his press conference during All Star weekend.

So we do hope it will cut down on the resting of players in marquee games, Silver added. I do recognize, though, that there isnt an easy solution to that problem, and Im sympathetic to fans who turn out whether they buy tickets to games or watching games on television and dont see their favorite player on the floor. But we also have to be realistic that the science has gotten to the point where there is that direct correlation that were aware of between fatigue and injuries. And as tough as it is on our fans to miss one of their favorite players for a game, its far better than having them get injured and be out for long periods of time. So were always still looking to strike that right balance.

Thisis the nuance and reasonableness we have come to expect from Silver since he has taken over as Commissioner. There was a part of Shelburnes report that was troubling and seemingly undercuts what he said during All Star weekend.

He states that it is unacceptable for owners to be uninvolved or defer decision-making on this topic to others in their organizations, who may not have the same awareness of the impact these decisions can have on fans and business partners, the reputation of the league and perception of our game.

Owners being involved in decision making about a players health is fundamentally a problem. Decisions to rest players are being made by doctors and players, based on a variety of factors and data. This is how it should remain.

Players are more educated than ever about the affects of their actions on their bodies. This has led to players partying lessand focusing on their bodies more. In addition, players are trying all types of new treatments to speed recovery or gain an edge. These include sensory deprivationand cryotherapy.

The NBA asking players to take on more risk to their bodies because a game is on national television in the middle of March is dangerous. The average NBA career is only 4.8 years.

Players should do everything they can to prolong their careers. Because on average they have a short time frame to make as much money as they can. Moreover, adding more injury risk this late in the season is adding more risk to players missing the postseason. This would be bad for the players, teams, fans, the NBA and their partners.

As the NBA has evolved there have been problems with the schedule uncovered. It is on the NBA to fix the problems, not on the players to suffer through them.

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The Evolution of the NBA: Player Rest - Thunderous Intentions

Mascara: What would we do without it?

It's a staple in many a makeup bag, sometimes the only thing women grab when they're in a rush. You might not have time to do a full face of makeup, but there's always time for a few swipes of mascara, and it will always make you feel great. There's just something about a defined lash that gives a girl the confidence to be the best version of herself.

Mascara can be traced to the Ancient Egyptians. During this time, both men and women were using a substance called kohl (typically composed of galena, malachite and soot) to darken their eyes. They would use the kohl to line their eyelids, and also mixed it with crocodile dung, water and honey to form a sort of paste for their eyelashes. The Ancient Egyptians felt that the eyes were the window to the soul, so they used these products to darken and conceal the eyes in an effort to protect them from evil spirits and bad energy.

21 PHOTOS

Evolution of Mascara

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A woman applies makeup using an eyelash stencil.

A woman combing her eyelashes as she looks in the mirror.

Actress Port Kelton demonstrates the latest mascara, which had its own sponge for easy application and removal.

A French advertisement for mascara, showing voluminous curled lashes.

A woman applying mascara in Milan, Italy.

British Actress Moyra Fraser is given an application of mascara by a beautician at one of Helena Rubenstein's salons.

A woman looks in the mirror to apply mascara. She wears a protective drape, to shield her clothes from excess makeup or possibly hair product.

A model curls her lashes. We still have these eyelash curlers on the market today!

Jane McBurney brushes her eyelashes with a small tool.

English supermodel Twiggy set off an eyelash craze, women everywhere wanted her long, full lashes.

A woman in a lacy peignoir applying mascara, with the easy-to-use brush developed in the 1950s.

A telephone operator in Warsaw, Poland, applying the always necessary mascara at work.

Every girl's worst nightmare! Lisa Lemole in the movie "Drive-In," has a serious case of the black tears.

A woman having taken off her Burqa has make up on her eye lashes by a local beautician in a beauty parlor in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A model has mascara applied backstage before the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

A model gets false eyelashes applied backstage at the Diesel Spring 2006 fashion show during Olympus Fashion Week.

A model has drastic eye makeup applied to celebrate the opening of the new Shu Uemura eyelash bar in Sydney, Australia.

The lash queens, all of the Kardashian sisters are known for their big bold lashes.

We're not surprised to see Nicki Minaj with these crazy false lashes, the star has been open about her love (and attachment to!) fake lashes and bold lipsticks.

With new developments every day, we can all experiment with new looks. Katy Perry dials up the fun with these UK flag-themed lashes.

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Kohl continued to be used for many years by other people as well, such as the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans. After the fall of the Roman Empire, however, some regions abandoned eye makeup. Many countries in Europe stopped using it, while those in the Middle East continued to darken their eyes for religious purposes.

In the 1830's, the Victorian Era brought elaborate beauty practices back into the mainstream. The use of mascara was revived, and women often spent hours on their beauty routines. Many would experiment and make their own concoctions at home, mixing ashes (typically the soot from an oil lamp) with elderberry over a fire.

When petroleum jelly was created and patented in 1872, many industries changed for good, and a mainstream mascara industry started brewing. It wasn't until 1917 when Eugene Rimmel and T.L. Williams both created a form of the mascara we know today. Williams witnessed his younger sister mixing Vaseline and coal dust to apply to her lashes, and decided to make a formula in his lab. Though initially called "Lash-in-Brow-Line," he later changed the name to Maybelline -- a combination of Maybel and Vaseline.

The mascara in 1917 was known as a "cake" mascara, in which a damp brush was rubbed against a cake with soap and black dye, then applied to lashes. It was the first "modern" eye cosmetic for everyday use, and quickly evolved. In 1933, some women chose to permanently dye their lashes. The process was highly dangerous, causing several women to go blind and resulting in at least one death.

In 1938, the first waterproof mascara arrived. Don't rejoice just yet, because this version was made of 50% turpentine, and caused a lot of allergic and negative reactions on skin. Also, apparently it had an absolutely disgusting odor. Following the first World War, Helena Rubenstein created a lotion-based cream, packaged in a tube and squeezed onto a brush. While it was still messy, it was a huge step in the direction of the products we have today. The 1960's saw a huge boom in the desire for lashes, as model Twiggy became a style icon.

Needless to say, there have been ups and downs in mascara's lifetime, but eventually we would end up with the wonder product we all know and love. So slather it on, ladies, and be glad you're living today -- using mascara without tar or coal in the ingredients.

Click through the gallery above to see mascara through the years!

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Beauty throwback: The evolution of mascara - AOL

Evolution over deep time: is it in the genes, or the species?

Roger Harris/Science Photo Library

A new paper threatens to pit palaeontologists against the rest of the biological community and promises to reignite the often-prickly debate over the question of the level at which selection operates.

Carl Simpson, a researcher in palaeobiology at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, has revived the controversial idea of species selection: that selective forces in nature operate on whole species at a macroevolutionary scale, rather than on individuals at the microevolutionary level.

Macroevolution, mostly concerned with extinct species, is the study of large-scale evolutionary phenomena across vast time spans. By contrast, microevolution focusses on evolution in individuals and species over shorter periods, and is the realm of biologists concerned with living organisms, sometimes called neontologists.

Neontologists, overall, maintain that all evolutionary phenomena can be explained in microevolutionary terms. Macroevolutionists often disagree.

In a paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, on the biological pre-print repository bioRxiv, Simpson has outlined a renewed case for species selection, using recent research and new insights, both scientific and philosophical. And this might be too much for the biological community to swallow.

The debate over levels of selection dates to Charles Darwin himself and concerns the question of what the unit of selection is in evolutionary biology.

The default assumption is that the individual organism is the unit of selection. If individuals of a particular species possess a trait that gives them reproductive advantage over others, then these individuals will have more offspring.

If this trait is heritable, the offspring too will reproduce at a higher rate than other members of the species. With time, this leads to the advantageous trait becoming species-typical.

Here, selection is operating on individuals, and this percolates up to cause species-level characteristics.

While Darwin favoured this model, he recognised that certain biological phenomena, such as the sterility of workers in eusocial insects such as bees and ants, could best be explained if selection operated at a group level.

Since Darwin, scientists have posited different units of selection: genes, organelles, cells, colonies, groups and species among them.

Simpsons argument hinges on the kind of macroevolutionary phenomena common in palaeontology: speciation and extinction over deep-time. Species selection is real, he says, and is defined as, a macroevolutionary analogue of natural selection, with species playing an analogous part akin to that played by organisms in microevolution.

Simpson takes issue with the argument that microevolutionary processes such as individual selection percolate up to cause macroevolutionary phenomena.

He presents evidence contradicting the idea, and concludes that the macroevolutionary patterns we actually observe are not simply the accumulation of microevolutionary change macroevolution occurs by changes within a population of species.

How this paper will be received, only time will tell. A 2010 paper in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7310/full/nature09205.html saw the famous evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson recant decades of commitment to the gene as the unit of selection, hinting instead at group selection. The mere suggestion of this brought a sharp rebuke from 137 scientists.

Simpsons claim is more radical again, so we can only wait for the controversy to deepen.

More here:

Macro or micro? Fight looms over evolution's essence - Cosmos

Editors note: This is the second part of a two-column series about debunking creationism.

[Click here to read part one: "Religion-based 'creationism' debasement of science"]

In his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins remarks denying evolution is much like denying the Holocaust. Is he right?

At first, Dawkins claim seems preposterous. So, in order to further investigate the issue, it seems worthwhile to ask the question: Why do people readily accept the idea of Holocaust but not of evolution? Do the varying degrees of belief correspond neatly with different amounts of evidence available to support each case?

Not surprisingly, this turns out not to be true, as the proof for evolution is plentiful and steadily mounting. Evidently, some people tend to shy away from evolution because the evolutionary theory, unlike an account of the Holocaust, has the potential to encroach on and disturb ones religious beliefs.

For a person whose entire worldview is based on faith, no amount of evidence is sufficient.

The evidence for evolution can broadly be categorized into testable predictions and retrodictions. Testable predictions are not predictions about how organisms will evolve in the future. Instead, they refer to predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil records or DNA, for instance, if evolution were true.

On the other hand, retrodictions are observations that make sense only in light of the evolutionary theory. In his book Why Evolution is True, biologist Jerry Coyne illustrates this through the vestigial tail in humans. The fishlike tail usually disappears in embryonic stages, but when it does not, a human is born with a tail projecting from the base of his spine.

A remnant of our ancestral species, tails can be still be seen in some of our close cousins, such as chimpanzees. The presence of a vestigial tail in humans can be rationalized only under the evolutionary theory and fails to make sense under a creationist model.

In the same book, Coyne presents a grand example of a testable prediction to support evolution: There were no terrestrial vertebrates until 390 million years ago, but clearly, they existed around 360 million years ago. Evolutionary theory, then, would predict the existence of a transitional form around this time period.

As expected, such a fossil from that exact time period was found in 2004 in Canada. It features traits corresponding to both fish and amphibians, including limbs that can be best described as part fin, part leg, Coyne writes.

Despite the overwhelming evidence in the fossil record, it is not uncommon to hear creationists demand for the missing links. A missing link refers to a fossil of an ancestral species that split into two different species through a process known as speciation. To begin with, the chances of finding fossils of a specific ancestral species nearly zero. Moreover, the transitional fossils provide the needed evidence.

Corpses fossilize under highly select conditions, and it is not only unreasonable but also illogical to expect fossils from every ancestral species. As Dawkins cleverly notes in his book The God Delusion, it is the equivalent of expecting a full cinematic record of a murderers every step leading up to the crime in order to convict him.

Even without the fossil record, evidence for evolution can be seen in DNA sequences, geographical distribution of species, bad design and so on.

If you were not already convinced of the veracity of the evolutionary theory, I do not expect you to nor should you change your mind in a few paragraphs. I have presented only a smattering of evidence for evolution, and the intention was only to illustrate the type of factual, unassailable and frankly, beautiful evidence that supports the evolutionary theory.

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OPINION Sastry: Evolution supported by extensive evidence - The Daily Toreador (registration)

Citi's equities desk was in the market with a $175 million block trade in gold producer Evolution Mining on Thursday afternoon.

As revealed by Street Talk, Citi was seeking bids for 87.4 million Evolution Mining shares at $1.98 to $2.05 a share.

The offer was priced at a 3.8 per cent to 6.3 per cent discount to the last close, and represented 5.2 per cent of Evolution's issued equity.

The shares were being sold as part of a hedge position entered into by Evolution shareholder La Mancha. Citi was calling it a "delta placement".

The broker was seeking bids by 6.30pm on Thursday.

La Mancha is Evolution's largest shareholder with a 28.4 per cent stake.

Evolution Mining this week told the marketit expects to achieve its March quarter and full-year production guidance.

Evolution hadpreviously flagged a production target of 200,000 ounces for the March quarter, and between 800,000-860,000 ounces for the full year to June 30.

The company will release full details on the March quarter performance on April 20.

Evolution in February said it returned to the black with a record interim profit of $136.7 million for the six months ended December, compared with a loss of $15.5 million a year ago.

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Citi launches $175m Evolution Mining block trade - The Australian Financial Review

"The Ski Jump." "The Carlton." "The Stanky Leg." Red Sox victory rituals sure have rhythm. Boston players break down their favorite moves from last year and share what's in store for 2017.

Andrew Benintendi's first few hours in the major leagues were filled with congratulatory phone calls and text messages, welcoming handshakes from his new Boston Red Sox teammates and a meeting with manager John Farrell to discuss his role on the team.

But as Benintendi prepared to make his debut Aug. 2 in Seattle, utility man Brock Holt asked the rookie left fielder the most pertinent question of all.

"Do you know how to do it?" Holt said. "Because if you're going to be out there, man, you're going to have to do it."

Yes, Benintendi reassured, he knew all about "Win, Dance, Repeat," the Red Sox outfielders' celebration after every victory, a ritual that had evolved into a choreographed social media sensation. And no, they need not worry about him blending in.

It didn't take long for Benintendi to prove it.

Nobody knows exactly who came up with the idea, although Red Sox outfielders agree it was at some point during last spring training.

"We've got a lot of downtime down here," center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr. says. "We've got to come up with something to keep us occupied."

Across baseball, outfielders often mark a victory by coming together for a brief acknowledgment before joining their teammates in a handshake line near the mound. Chris Young -- at 33, the older brother in a Red Sox outfield that featured Bradley (26) and superstar right fielder Mookie Betts (24) before 22-year-old Benintendi got called up directly from Double-A -- mentioned he had been part of outfields in Arizona and Oakland that engaged in the usual glove taps and leaping hip bumps.

"But not to the extent that we did," Young says. "We definitely took it to another level last year."

It began innocently enough, the three outfielders converging for a rehearsed bow and handshake, "just something to have fun and be original," according to Betts. Within a few weeks, that grew into what Bradley describes as "a game within the game," with the outfielder who made the biggest contribution to the victory getting his imaginary picture taken by the other two.

"A glamour shot, so to speak," Bradley says. "You had the outfielders competing against each other, making each other better by trying to see who could have the best game, which, in the end, helps the team."

Betts and Bradley, in particular, were having breakthrough seasons. And the Red Sox were winning -- a lot. They had 49 victories by the All-Star break and reeled off 11 in a row in September en route to 93 wins overall and a division title. Over time, the glamour shots were beginning to feel, well, unoriginal.

The outfielders stepped up their celebration game. The camera clicks and freeze-frame poses turned into rolling video and dance moves. And with help from the Red Sox's official Twitter account, "Win, Dance, Repeat" became a thing.

"I don't think we thought it would be as big as it was," Holt says. "It's just something that we thought would be good to do just to have a little bit more fun out there together, kind of like a bonding thing. But it took off. People enjoyed it, and we ended up enjoying ourselves as well."

Says Betts: "I didn't think that many people paid attention to what's going on after the game. I just thought it would be our thing that we had fun with."

A favorite move? Like flavors of ice cream, it's a matter of personal taste. Here are five of the Red Sox outfielders' favorites:

Player: Bradley

Date/game: Sept. 9 at Toronto

Sensing fans were enjoying "Win, Dance, Repeat," the Sox shot a commercial in which the outfielders sat in a conference room and brainstormed comical dance moves: "The Worm" and "The Running Man," to name two.

Bradley's contribution: "The Ski Jump."

But after a 13-3 rout in a series opener against the Blue Jays in which he went 2-for-4 and scored three runs, Bradley broke out "The Ski Jump" for real. Flanked by Holt and Betts, Bradley motioned his arms to his right and left before putting some air between his feet and the Rogers Centre turf.

"He did it in the commercial and we were like, 'No way we could do that on the field.' And then he did it," Young says. "It was hilarious."

Player: Betts

Date/game: Sept. 23 at Tampa Bay

As the wins piled up, the dances became more creative. The outfielders got more competitive, too.

"It was like, 'OK, what you got now?' " Bradley says. "It's almost like we were pushing each other."

Betts, in the midst of an MVP-caliber season in every which way, took things to another level when he unveiled "The Carlton," a jig popularized by actor Alfonso Ribeiro's character of the same name on the 1990s sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

After going 3-for-4 in a 2-1 victory over the Rays, Betts swung his arms from side to side, a la Carlton Banks in a dance that was based largely on Courteney Cox's stage dance in Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" video.

"That game, I was going back and forth between a couple different dances," Betts says. "I got to two outs [in the ninth inning] and didn't exactly know what I was going to do, and I just said, 'Whatever. I'll roll with The Carlton,' and it ended up being pretty good."

After the game, Betts even took to Twitter to solicit dance requests from fans, some of whom forgot he isn't Fred Astaire.

"I got some good ideas, nothing too crazy," Betts says. "It's just, some of the stuff you just can't do because you have spikes on."

Player: Young

Date/game: Sept. 6 at San Diego

Bradley and Young powered a 5-1 victory over the Padres. They both homered and drove in two runs apiece, as the Red Sox snapped a two-game losing streak.

Time for a partner dance?

"In that case, the [third] guy would be the arbitrator," Young says. "There was a couple times when it was close, but even if it was close, you're not going to be wrong going either way."

Young said the outfielders would gesture to one another in the ninth inning to avoid a postgame miscommunication. And if there was disagreement?

"If one guy hadn't won in a while," Young says, "you probably let him have it."

Young had recently returned from a two-month stint on the disabled list. Given the chance, he debuted a simple dance in which he straightened his right leg, stuck it out and moved it in a circle.

The way Young sees it, his move started a trend.

"I think that was the first solo [dance] act of all the solo acts," Young says.

Player: Multiple

Date/game: Multiple

Bradley and Betts played all but a handful of games in center and right field, respectively. But injuries forced the Red Sox to cycle through seven left fielders, from Holt on Opening Day through Benintendi down the stretch.

"Just because you just got in there, it wasn't an excuse," Bradley says. "You had to know what was up. You had to be able to fill right in and be able to do it because everybody's watching."

Converted catcher Blake Swihart (13 games) and Triple-A call-up Bryce Brentz (17 games) were in the mix while "Win, Dance, Repeat" still consisted mainly of the "freeze-frame" photo. Ryan LaMarre and Rusney Castillo started one game apiece, both losses, and didn't get to participate.

Holt, meanwhile, continued to display his versatility by playing five positions. But he spent 64 games in left field and saw the routine evolve throughout the season.

"Toward the end of the year, it got a little bit more crazy," Holt says. "Mookie was doing something different every time, and Jackie broke out his ski jump. I think guys' personalities kind of came out a little bit. I know I'm not a very good dancer. But it was something fun for us to talk about throughout the game and then at the end see what whoever won came up with."

Player: Benintendi

Date/game: Sept. 21 at Baltimore

After homering like Reggie Jackson, Benintendi moved like Michael Jackson.

"When I was little, I would watch Michael Jackson dance videos and try to dance like him," Benintendi says. "That was the first thing that popped in my mind."

And so, after sparking a 5-1 victory with a three-run homer in the fifth inning against Orioles reliever Brad Brach, Benintendi met up with Bradley and Betts in center field for the traditional bow and fist pump. Then, as the others knelt to roll the video camera, Benintendi shuffled forward three steps, kicked his right leg, stuck out his left hip and struck a pose.

It was vintage King of Pop, straight out of the "Billie Jean" era.

"I had seen previews of it beforehand," Bradley says. "But I was very much looking forward to seeing him break it out. We just needed him to be the player of the game."

Says Holt: "Beni's MJ was sick. That was probably my favorite one."

A three-game division series sweep by the Cleveland Indians prevented the Red Sox outfielders from a grand postseason finale. Now, with Opening Day approaching, they must decide whether to reprise their dance steps.

Young suggests perhaps retiring "Win, Dance, Repeat" and coming up with a new ritual for a new year, something that evolves organically as the season goes along.

Then again, Betts says he plans to poll fans again for dance requests.

"We shall see," Bradley says. "I don't know what the season holds."

Says Young: "I have no idea what's going to come of it this year. I'm not putting too much pressure on it. Whatever happens, happens. We just like to have fun with it."

Animations by Andrew Colin Beck

Link:

'Win, Dance, Repeat' -- The evolution of the Boston Red Sox ... - ESPN

A University of Minnesota evolutionary biologist is hoping to poke some holes in our notions of our ancient ancestors.

Marlene Zuk is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where her research focuses on animal behavior and evolution. On Thursday and Friday, she will give two presentations as part of Warner Memorial Lecture series at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Zuk is interested in ways that people use animal behavior to think about human behavior, and vice versa, as well as in public understanding of evolution. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on many topics, including a seminar on Whats the Alternative to Alternative Medicine?

Her first presentation will be: Paleofantasy: what evolution tells us about modern life at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in 120 Student Union, 521 East Ave. N. The lecture will focus on modern cultural notions of how our ancient ancestors evolved to eat and live and what that means for our understanding of our modern lives.

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football or did we? the talks abstract said. Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life?

Her second talk Rapid evolution in silence: adaptive signal loss in the Pacific field cricket, will focus on research into the evolution and sex selection of the insect. It will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday in 1309 Centennial Hall, 308 N. 16th St. Both talks are free and open to the public.

The Warner Memorial Lecture honors former Biology Professor James Jim Warner, who taught at UW-L from 1963 until retiring in 1996. Warner established the Terrestrial Field Ecology Course Fund in the Department of Biology to support outdoor laboratory equipment for field ecology courses.

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University of Minnesota biologist to talk about how evolution impacts modern life - La Crosse Tribune

Mona (Museum of Old and New Art), Hobart, Australia. Until 17 April.

Artwork: Aaron Curry. Courtesy Almin Rech and David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Rmi Chauvin/Mona, Australia

Daft Dank Space, a 2013 room installation by Aaron Curry, selected by neurobiologist Mark Changizi.

Pondering four nondescript doorways in a darkened entrance, I feel like a rat primed to hunt down cheese. But the quest laid out in On the Origin of Art, an exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Hobart, Australia, is to explore the labyrinthine journeys of four eminent scientistcurators. Each answers a tough question: does art have a biological basis, and has it contributed to human evolution?

The scientists are experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary theorist Brian Boyd and theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi. Each devoted two years to developing the show, collaborating with Mona curators. The exhibition aims to rip art-making and appreciation out of the realm of art historians, to probe whether there is a biological as well as a cultural premise to it.

Pinker, Miller, Boyd and Changizi selected works that reflect their own areas of expertise, producing four very separate journeys. The exhibition features 230 antiquities, photographs, paintings and contemporary installations spanning the Italian Renaissance, indigenous Australia and Ottoman Islam, among other cultures. There are dark, complex, twisting corridors bursting with lush pockets of art and not a label in sight. Each scientist has recorded an audio tour for his segment, talking the visitor through the subtleties of their theories and selections. The result is a rich cacophony of intellectual and sensory delight.

Artwork:March Quinn. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Rmi Chauvin/Mona, Australia

We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars (AJ 280R) DIL2214, 2009, by Marc Quinn.

The exhibition shows that art is a signalling system using patterns and pattern recognition for human communication. Pinker focuses on Darwinism, asking whether the desire and ability to make art is a heritable trait that gives humans a reproductive advantage, or whether it is a by-product of survival adaptations. He explores nature's patterns as biological cues for choice-making. As he shows through Aspassio Haronitaki's 2016 'flowerscape' Who Says Your Feelings Have to Make Sense, landscape paintings can elicit an aesthetic and emotional response to geography and, beyond that, to concepts of ideal habitats and survival.

Miller sees art as a strategy for attracting mates by signalling fitness, intelligence, skill, resourcefulness and dominance. One of his choices is Marc Quinn's 2009 We Share Our Chemistry with the Stars, which magnifies a human iris a structure that both vividly displays interior emotion and receives others' signals.

Boyd suggests that art is cognitive play with pattern, a vehicle for processing human anxieties about existential uncertainty. Yayoi Kusama's room installation Dots Obsession Tasmania (2016) explores that liminal state through mirrors, a repetitive pattern of dots and amorphous shapes. Katsushika Hokusai's classic Great Wave off Kanagawa (around 1831) is a stylized, rhythmically controlled image of the dangerous natural world.

Changizi, meanwhile, argues that art mimics sounds and forms in nature, thus harnessing its patterns visually and aurally but mainly as a way of connecting us emotionally. Changizi's selection, Daft Dank Space (2013) by Aaron Curry, is a riotously colourful room installation that echoes the interconnected organs and tissues in the human body. United Visual Artists' 440Hz (2016) creates an alluring interactive installation that translates visitors' body movements into rhythms of light and sound.

The exhibition is more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps it is a little ambitious in applying reductionist scientific methodology to the complex realm of art-making and art appreciation. But it supports the idea that art is not purely a cultural phenomenon, but crosses diverse cultures with characteristic features such as depictions of land or human physiology. It highlights art as a vehicle for communication about fundamentals: procreation and survival, group identity, bonding and status. Museum director David Walsh acknowledges that the exhibition only touches on aspects of this expansive theme, stating that other perspectives remain to be explored. These include the role of folk art in community bonding, and the tactile process of making things that are valued and special, as has been described by researcher Ellen Dissanayake.

Jane Clark, senior research curator at Mona, hopes that the exhibition will promote openness to alternative ways of looking at and thinking about art. I found On the Origin of Art an exciting, highly stimulating, cross-disciplinary experience that delivers intellectual and sensory insights into how we make sense of our world.

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Evolution: Four takes on the evolution of art - Nature.com

The American poet William Stafford was often asked by friends, readers, students and colleagues: When did you become a poet? The response he regularly offered was: The question isnt when I became a poet; the question is when other people stopped.

Stafford was articulating what many poets believe: that the roots of poetry (rhythm, form, sound) go far back both personally and culturally to the crib and to the fire in front of the cave.

No surprise, then, that children delight in the pleasures of lullabies, nursery rhymes, chants and jingles. They bounce, clap, dance responding in ways that involve their whole bodies. Yet as they get older, their delight in poetry often fades. Their pleasure in language and form lessens. In Staffords words, they stop being poets.

How have schools been part of this evolution, and what can they do to bring back delight?

Historically, poetry has played an important role in the curriculum of U.S. schools. Early American textbooks such as The New England Primer and the McGuffey Readers taught children to read with a combination of poetry and prose. In this way, poetry was used to teach morals, patriotism and nationalism, along with subject areas like geography and mathematics.

In 19th- and early 20th-century classrooms, schoolroom poetry was memorized and performed as a way to promote citizenship, to create a shared sense of community, to develop an American identity and to assist with language acquisition particularly among immigrants. Because they were meant to be learned by heart, the poems taught usually rhymed, had regular meter and used language that was easy to understand, remember and repeat.

This ease of form and content was not, however, matched by historical accuracy. Writers sometimes rewrote history into poems that celebrated American values. Take, for example, Paul Reveres Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1860. The narrative is compelling for memorization and performance, and portrays an admirable version of American heroism; however, it contains little documented historical truth.

Learned by heart and shared with an audience, these poetic retellings of Americas past had significant cultural impact: Both the performer and those listening internalized a story that promoted a specific version of nationalism.

In the mid-20th century, it became less important for schools to make citizens or teach English language through memorized lines. Instead, poetry in schools separated into two strands: serious poetry and verse. Serious poetry was studied; it was officially sanctioned, used to teach literary elements like iambic pentameter, rhymed couplets, metaphor and alliteration. Verse, on the other hand, was unsanctioned playful, irreverent and sometimes offensive. It was embraced by children for the sake of pleasure and delight.

By the late 20th century, classrooms and curricula began to value the sciences over literary expression and information and technology over art. The study of any poetry serious or not became marginalized, seldom occurring except in AP courses preparing students for college literature study.

Though the late 20th century saw a decline in the study of poetry in schools, recent decades have seen an upsurge in poetry that is more relevant and more accessible to young people.

For instance, if in the past, schoolchildren learned poems written almost exclusively by white men glorifying a sanitized version of American history, recently students have begun to read poems by poets who represent racial, ethnic, cultural or religious diversity as part of their heritage. This represents a major development in the world of poetry for children.

Poets in recent years have introduced English-speaking children to a range of cross-cultural poetic forms: Japanese haiku, Korean sijo and the Middle Eastern ghazal. Poets have published collections of poetry (often multilingual) from around the world, conveying the experiences of culturally diverse national and international groups.

As well, children have access to poetry by groups that have historically been marginalized and silenced in American schools: Native Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asian-Americans and African-Americans, as well as LGBTQ poets, poets with disabilities and poets from a range of religious backgrounds.

Many young people are also writing poems themselves both inside and outside the classroom. There are a number of recent collections of poetry that contain the voices of young writers: Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls, Paint Me Like I Am: Teen Poems from WritersCorp, When The Rain Sings: Poems By Young Native Americans, Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young People and The Palm of my Heart: Poems by African American Children. These collections are often used in classrooms to teach poetry as a vehicle for self expression.

In addition to writing poetry in their classes, todays young writers are appearing on numerous poetry websites and are circulating poems their own and those of others through social media.

The most exciting development in the world of poetry for young people is in the arena of performance. There is a widespread renewed interest in spoken poetry for and by young people. Its growth is signaled by the emergence of hip-hop, rap, poetry slams and spoken-word poetry events.

The roots of poetry are in speaking and listening. Poetry events for young people once again allow students to perform for an audience those poems they have committed to memory and learned by heart. If, in the past, poems were memorized as a way to indoctrinate students into a way of being American, todays young poets are using their words and voices to express their own cultural and political convictions and commitments.

As a poet, educator and scholar, I am heartened by the current reinvigoration of the field. In myriad forms by diverse writers in a variety of venues, poems for children are happening.

Young people are growing their own voices, falling in love with words, writing and performing their own poems.

In and out of schools, they are reclaiming the poet selves that Stafford believes they were born with through a powerful and continuing relationship with the rhythms, forms and sounds that are poems.

Original post:

Making poetry their own: The evolution of poetry education - The Conversation US