Pictures Of Human Evolution

Confessions of a gossip girl

Joseph Conrad got it right when he said that gossip was something we all profess to dislike, but secretly enjoy. Truman Capote said that all literature was gossip, and Hugh Leonard went further, saying that people prefer gossip to literature -- which explains why sales of 'Heat' magazine tend to be higher than, say, Booker-prize winning novels.

We have always been drawn to gossip. Back in 1728, Henry Fielding wrote that the best sweeteners of tea were love and scandal, and more recently Graham Norton declared that a problem shared is gossip. Or, as legendary ' New York Post ' gossip columnist Liz Smith puts it: "Gossip is just news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress."

There are three kinds of gossip: positive, negative and industrial. The first kind is the stuff of tea-and-cake conversation: exchanging news about others, asking about their lives, passing on information, exchanging details about people you both know -- who has just had a baby, who has been promoted, who has gone where on holiday, that kind of thing.

This kind of positive gossip is the glue of human communication, and what separates us from robots and root vegetables. It is different from sharing confidences, in that you are not talking about yourselves, but about others who are not present. As in, "Have you met Auntie Madge's new toyboy yet?"

Negative gossip is the same conversation, but toxic: whose new baby looks like a frog, who screwed whom to get their promotion, whose holiday choice is vile and tacky. Negative gossip -- a polite way of saying 'bitching' -- is the twisted sister of schadenfreude in that it involves malicious pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, except it is opinion-based and created by you and your co-gossiper.

Sometimes it can be cathartic and bonding to let off steam about a third party, but it pays to be wary -- if someone is willing to gossip negatively about someone else with you, then what are they saying about YOU when you leave the room? Exactly. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The third kind of gossip is also the toxic variety, except it has been depersonalised, formatted, glossily packaged and sold back to us for profit. It is the celebrity magazine, the gossip website, the tabloid newspaper, the reality television show; it is humanity dehumanised, magnified ("Spot the cellulite!"), and forensically picked over with a hugely negative slant.

We are not talking the reverential gush of 'Hello!' magazine here, but the rapacious misogyny of the low-end gossip industry, kept afloat by our insatiable appetite for gawping at women too fat ( Kerry Katona , Fern Britton ) too thin ( Victoria Beckham , Angelina Jolie ), or too mad (Kerry Katona, Britney Spears , Lindsay Lohan , the lot).

What is the meaning of the evolution picture of monkey to human ...

Http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunthert/4132549445/in/photostream/

One single image can’t explain the complexity of human evolution. Authors expected the young reader to read the text, I’m afraid many just looked at the image and got a poor idea of evolution.

Many mistakes, misunderstandings or preconceptions come from this picture :

- The hominid on the left is a modern chimpanzee

That picture has no correspondence with real evolutionary theory and is never seriously used in any scientifically correct media. It certainly is not connected with Darwin. Humans do not come from monkeys – no humans anywhere ever came from monkeys – this is not what evolution says – in fact, only populations evolve, not individuals – no individual monkey or ape or human ever evolved into something else – they stayed monkeys and apes and humans all of their days. But the populations that they lived in gradually changed over the milena; they changed in step with the changing landscape that the growing human populations migrated into and colonized over the past 50,000 years or so.- It’s too bad that earth is full now – no more space to migrate to – at least once we cut down the rest of the tropical forests.. So the human race, an resource dominating, migratory, bipedal primate, is going to have to change its stripes, I don’t think it will be possible. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunthert/4132549445/in/photostream/

One single image can’t explain the complexity of human evolution. Authors expected the young reader to read the text, I’m afraid many just looked at the image and got a poor idea of evolution.

Human evolution, an illustrated introduction

Human evolution, a guide to the debates

Ancestral images, the iconography of human origins

The significance of ancient religions in relation to human evolution and brain development

Aspects of human evolution