skinvolution
sorry - no LJ cut thingie at the moment..
hey - i'm a'deciding to REFORMAT MY HARDDRIVE AGAIN!!!! so here's an uncompleted LJ post talking about skin and evolution - stay tuned for it's update on radiation and potatos and such and such...
ON DREAMS: It's 3:pm, weds, although it seems like sunday, and yesterday seemed like saturday, so apparently i am moving back in time or something. oh - you know one thing i figured out about dreams? - and you can take this to the bank: when you dream of yourself when you were younger, that means your body is regaining health, although it could also mean you are confronting stupid psychological issues that have never gone away since your parents fed you lice for desert.
COMPUTER STUFF - (DON'T READ): I am writing this as my SPYWARE TERMINATOR downloads from online, AGAIN. because i had to erase it all and start over because of the TROJAN. which knows all and sees all - in fact, it might be doing things right now. cuz i hear weird HD noises. that could be because when i reformatted my harddrive AGAIN, it said WINDOWS was still on it, and asked me if i wanted to install an ADDITIONAL WINDOWS on the same partition - so i did this cuz i didn't know if i'd ever be able to access my HP XP OS disc ever again. so now i have two windows, and the old one, "windows", with the TROJAN, might still be in charge of my new one, "WIDOWS". ugh! anyway, i talked to this techie last night and i might install NORTON 360 for $7/month - but maybe only on the next HD i buy, which will be at least 80gig, and which i'll put linux on as well. i'll use this current 20-gig HD, with it's free juno and freeware, for emergencies, etc.
i have people-pc, but i also installed juno, which sucks even more, but which is safer at the moment. the thing is, i THOUGHT i started a PAID juno account, but what they gave me was the crap FREE version... wtf!?
while i pass the time, i will discuss two things: skin, and radiation, or something...
SKIN AND EVOLUTION: i listened to coast-to-coast last night, and this guy was talking about the sun and vitamin D3 and cancer... the whole subject is one i've been interested in for a long time. for example, i always KNEW that people who migrated north from the tropics turned "white" not just because all the people in africa who were PALE were killed off by melanoma, but because the EMIGRANTS NEEDED to make more VITAMIN D - since there IS LESS SUNSHINE UP NORTH. it is a fact that animals who need more vitamin D will seek out more sunshine, as i did when i went out into the woods and tanned naked a few years ago - (my cfs was worse due to vitamin D deficiency). so, these people went to europe and asia and suddenly found themselves deprived of the 5,000 MG vitamin D that they were producing as blacks in africa. therefore, they sought out sunshine, but didn't get killed so much by melanoma. instead, the DARKER, melanoma-resistant died off from D deficiency, (rickets, fatigue, etc.). they also died off, in a cold climate, because of the thermal properties of their dark skin, (melanin)...
the whole concept of dark skin is confuzzled. because dark objects absorb heat. so why would peoples' skin be DARKER in hotter climates?! that would make them all die of heat stroke! but no, grasshopper, look to the example of the arctic fox, who scampers through the north: why isn't his hair BLACK, to absorb heat?! because, the WHITE camaflauge was so important that a DIFFERENT type of heat-absorbtion was evolved: hollow hair, which contains warmth!
in the same way, dark skin MELANIN cells absorb heat - however, they don't TRANSFER that heat into the human's body. instead, they trigger sweat glands on the skin. two aside points to make:
a primary and unique evolution of our species has been the shedding of hair and the emergence of skin that SWEATS. other animals may only sweat on the bottom of their paws, where the ground may be intensely heated, but we sweat all over. this whole amazing organ of skin, that sweats, makes D, protects against heatstroke and sunburn, and is more sensitive than that of almost all animals, necessitates attention from a LARGE PORTION of our brain; and this is greatly responsible, in addition to fish and nut consumption, tool implementation and language, for the relatively huge size of our brain and INTELLIGENCE, (making childbirth hell on earth). we are comparable to the naked elephants and dolphins/whales, who are the few animals who share the same type of large, "EMPATHY" neurons we find essential to our humanity.
point two: skin is a thermal disadvantage in the north, although it does make D), unless compensations are made, such as the addition of clothing, and the slow re-emergence of hair. but the question is begged. if sweaty dark skin is so great in tropical climates, why don't lions and zebras, etc., have it too? well, for one thing, it's a major invention, and it takes a lot of evolutionary expertise to pull off. but also, hair can remain a thermal advantage in tropical realms, especially in drier climates, because nights can still get cold, and most animals would perish if they spent time instead on building shelters. so most haired animals in these areas are partly or wholy nocturnal, meaning they retreat into shade and caves during the hot day - and this is also partly true for diernals, like lions, who take siestas from maybe 10:am til 3:pm. and, finally, there was an critical incentive for humans to go naked, unlike other animals, and that is the fact that humans stood and walked upright. why so important? important because all the bodies heat thus rises to the head, and the intensity of this is too much for a haired ape, unless, like the gorilla, you are cloistered in the jungle. an overheated brain would have been a serious problem. so, sweating/skin, walking upright, a big brain/intelligence: these are all interconnected.
why, in the first place, did some humans emmigrate from africa and into europe and asia, from 200,000 to 70,000 years ago? well, it was most likely climate. and most everything else is determined by climate - like food sources, like wars, even like the emergence of civilisation or language. another thing related to climate is the emergence, or diminishment, of disease and predators. it is fun to speculate that they emigrated because of a war; or because of lions, or because of mosquitos of aids. the whole legacy of the relationship between malaria and sickle-cell anemia is also fascinating. but it is more responsible to simplify the answer down, simply, to CLIMATE. and, (besides the climatic changes in south africa 200,000 years ago),THAT makes me think of the supervolcanic eruption that occured 75,000 years ago, severely culling the human race. it is reasonable to conjecture that a northward migration occured to escape the dark and ash which soon enveloped the tropics, with its associated depletions, extinctions and plagues. did it become too cold in africa? or to desert? i have no idea. but one thing is sure, skin production of vitamin D plummeted beneath the cloud of ash, and this was an incentive to search northward. btw, this was the same time that clothing, beads, primitive money, and even primitive writing, first emerged. and so it is logical to assume that language had begun, and therefore that the rule of force by a central social "PRIMATE" had given way to more cooperative hunting and planning, and the rise of relative democracy. and, i think i have heard that the wolf may have been domesticated 60,000 years ago, (although some say 10,000), which would make perfect sense... i.e., language, cooperative hunting, sheltering in caves, movement up north.
i must now cook some tubers... grunt...
hey - i'm a'deciding to REFORMAT MY HARDDRIVE AGAIN!!!! so here's an uncompleted LJ post talking about skin and evolution - stay tuned for it's update on radiation and potatos and such and such...
ON DREAMS: It's 3:pm, weds, although it seems like sunday, and yesterday seemed like saturday, so apparently i am moving back in time or something. oh - you know one thing i figured out about dreams? - and you can take this to the bank: when you dream of yourself when you were younger, that means your body is regaining health, although it could also mean you are confronting stupid psychological issues that have never gone away since your parents fed you lice for desert.
COMPUTER STUFF - (DON'T READ): I am writing this as my SPYWARE TERMINATOR downloads from online, AGAIN. because i had to erase it all and start over because of the TROJAN. which knows all and sees all - in fact, it might be doing things right now. cuz i hear weird HD noises. that could be because when i reformatted my harddrive AGAIN, it said WINDOWS was still on it, and asked me if i wanted to install an ADDITIONAL WINDOWS on the same partition - so i did this cuz i didn't know if i'd ever be able to access my HP XP OS disc ever again. so now i have two windows, and the old one, "windows", with the TROJAN, might still be in charge of my new one, "WIDOWS". ugh! anyway, i talked to this techie last night and i might install NORTON 360 for $7/month - but maybe only on the next HD i buy, which will be at least 80gig, and which i'll put linux on as well. i'll use this current 20-gig HD, with it's free juno and freeware, for emergencies, etc.
i have people-pc, but i also installed juno, which sucks even more, but which is safer at the moment. the thing is, i THOUGHT i started a PAID juno account, but what they gave me was the crap FREE version... wtf!?
while i pass the time, i will discuss two things: skin, and radiation, or something...
SKIN AND EVOLUTION: i listened to coast-to-coast last night, and this guy was talking about the sun and vitamin D3 and cancer... the whole subject is one i've been interested in for a long time. for example, i always KNEW that people who migrated north from the tropics turned "white" not just because all the people in africa who were PALE were killed off by melanoma, but because the EMIGRANTS NEEDED to make more VITAMIN D - since there IS LESS SUNSHINE UP NORTH. it is a fact that animals who need more vitamin D will seek out more sunshine, as i did when i went out into the woods and tanned naked a few years ago - (my cfs was worse due to vitamin D deficiency). so, these people went to europe and asia and suddenly found themselves deprived of the 5,000 MG vitamin D that they were producing as blacks in africa. therefore, they sought out sunshine, but didn't get killed so much by melanoma. instead, the DARKER, melanoma-resistant died off from D deficiency, (rickets, fatigue, etc.). they also died off, in a cold climate, because of the thermal properties of their dark skin, (melanin)...
the whole concept of dark skin is confuzzled. because dark objects absorb heat. so why would peoples' skin be DARKER in hotter climates?! that would make them all die of heat stroke! but no, grasshopper, look to the example of the arctic fox, who scampers through the north: why isn't his hair BLACK, to absorb heat?! because, the WHITE camaflauge was so important that a DIFFERENT type of heat-absorbtion was evolved: hollow hair, which contains warmth!
in the same way, dark skin MELANIN cells absorb heat - however, they don't TRANSFER that heat into the human's body. instead, they trigger sweat glands on the skin. two aside points to make:
a primary and unique evolution of our species has been the shedding of hair and the emergence of skin that SWEATS. other animals may only sweat on the bottom of their paws, where the ground may be intensely heated, but we sweat all over. this whole amazing organ of skin, that sweats, makes D, protects against heatstroke and sunburn, and is more sensitive than that of almost all animals, necessitates attention from a LARGE PORTION of our brain; and this is greatly responsible, in addition to fish and nut consumption, tool implementation and language, for the relatively huge size of our brain and INTELLIGENCE, (making childbirth hell on earth). we are comparable to the naked elephants and dolphins/whales, who are the few animals who share the same type of large, "EMPATHY" neurons we find essential to our humanity.
point two: skin is a thermal disadvantage in the north, although it does make D), unless compensations are made, such as the addition of clothing, and the slow re-emergence of hair. but the question is begged. if sweaty dark skin is so great in tropical climates, why don't lions and zebras, etc., have it too? well, for one thing, it's a major invention, and it takes a lot of evolutionary expertise to pull off. but also, hair can remain a thermal advantage in tropical realms, especially in drier climates, because nights can still get cold, and most animals would perish if they spent time instead on building shelters. so most haired animals in these areas are partly or wholy nocturnal, meaning they retreat into shade and caves during the hot day - and this is also partly true for diernals, like lions, who take siestas from maybe 10:am til 3:pm. and, finally, there was an critical incentive for humans to go naked, unlike other animals, and that is the fact that humans stood and walked upright. why so important? important because all the bodies heat thus rises to the head, and the intensity of this is too much for a haired ape, unless, like the gorilla, you are cloistered in the jungle. an overheated brain would have been a serious problem. so, sweating/skin, walking upright, a big brain/intelligence: these are all interconnected.
why, in the first place, did some humans emmigrate from africa and into europe and asia, from 200,000 to 70,000 years ago? well, it was most likely climate. and most everything else is determined by climate - like food sources, like wars, even like the emergence of civilisation or language. another thing related to climate is the emergence, or diminishment, of disease and predators. it is fun to speculate that they emigrated because of a war; or because of lions, or because of mosquitos of aids. the whole legacy of the relationship between malaria and sickle-cell anemia is also fascinating. but it is more responsible to simplify the answer down, simply, to CLIMATE. and, (besides the climatic changes in south africa 200,000 years ago),THAT makes me think of the supervolcanic eruption that occured 75,000 years ago, severely culling the human race. it is reasonable to conjecture that a northward migration occured to escape the dark and ash which soon enveloped the tropics, with its associated depletions, extinctions and plagues. did it become too cold in africa? or to desert? i have no idea. but one thing is sure, skin production of vitamin D plummeted beneath the cloud of ash, and this was an incentive to search northward. btw, this was the same time that clothing, beads, primitive money, and even primitive writing, first emerged. and so it is logical to assume that language had begun, and therefore that the rule of force by a central social "PRIMATE" had given way to more cooperative hunting and planning, and the rise of relative democracy. and, i think i have heard that the wolf may have been domesticated 60,000 years ago, (although some say 10,000), which would make perfect sense... i.e., language, cooperative hunting, sheltering in caves, movement up north.
i must now cook some tubers... grunt...