Pollywogs!

"Are humans still evolving? In the vernacular sense of improving morally and intellectually - by cultural changes - I think so," says Steven Pinker. "In the biological sense of changes in the gene pool, it's impossible to say." If pressed to come off the fence, however, the Harvard-based evolutionary biologist knows where he stands. "People, including me, would rather believe that significant human biological evolution stopped between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, before the races diverged, which would ensure that racial and ethnic groups are biologically equivalent," he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18925421.300

Why is he a pussy?  He just danced around the truth, for fear of 'looking bad'.  The hard truth is that evolution does NOT function in the same way on people who have subdued the wilderness, augmented their bodies with technology and surgery, and medicated their illnesses with antibiotics and drugs (the article touches very briefly ('some experts', including the light-footed Pinker, ohs nos) on this at a couple points, but doesn't bring it out as the massive force on natural evolution that it is).  I mean, that is a simple fact…evolution is a natural process…the things that technology has allowed us to do…man made.  People are still evolving, but the evolutionary pressure is VASTLY different than it was 50,000 years ago, which was VASTLY different than it was 10,000 years ago, and vastly different than it was even 200 years ago.  

Steven Pinker, go find your balls.  You're allowed to say people are different.  It sounds like the pile he REALLY doesn't want to step in is whether some of the more recent differences (the ones that make some people burn easy in the sun, for example) are necessarily 'better' in some way than the others.  The thing is, evolutionary pressure determines what is 'better'.  If people need 'this' to survive, evolution is damn well going to select for that! 

Whether people are still evolving DOESN'T NOT have anything to do with what people 'think' evolving means.  What the scientists are really saying is "I know if I say something that sounds racists, you're going to destroy me", "You don't know what evolution means, technically"…and then you have this chestnut:

 "Without a doubt, the most important selective pressures continue to be on brain function," says Wills.

What an idiot.  Since when was the advancement of technology and society pushed forward by the entire population together at once?  And, you don't need a brain to make children, you need a…well, you know what you need…it sure as hell isn't a particularly good brain.   Any idiot can make a child, and it seems that the more educated people are, the fewer children they have.  Wills must mean that the smartest people don't spend time fooling with education, they just get down and fuck as much as possible, and make tons of babies.  Hmm…I guess it depends upon your definition of 'smart'…from an evolutionarily 'spread your genes' standpoint, it makes perfect sense… 

Maybe I'm being to hard on those two.  They are trying to explain practical biological happenings to a myth-filled, god-fearing public and they don't want to be labeled a racists to boot.   The article is quite good actually.