As medicine becomes super advanced, and super expensive, the super rich may evolve into a completely different species from everyone else, according to American futurologist Paul Saffo. He thinks medical technology such as replacement organs, specially tailored drugs, and genetic research tools to alert the moneybags of any possible hereditary health dangers, could all lead to a new class of rich, elite, and longer-living humans.

Here are Saffo’s thoughts on the advantages this would give the rich, as reported in the Guardian:

“I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That’s 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.”

At the very least, they’ll be able to afford health care—and keep opposing it for the rest of is.

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Image: iStockphoto

• The “iFart” v. “Pull My Finger” legal battle comes to a close. The solution? Release a new app, “Clear the Air.”

• He’s ba-ack: Kirk Cameron defends his nutbag anti-evolution claims, and proposed vandalism.

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Forgive them, Darwin, for they know not what they do. Former child star Kirk Cameron, known for his role on the incurably bubbly ’80s sitcom Growing Pains, has announced via Youtube a plan to subvert the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. His brilliant plan? He wants to deliver 50,000 copies of an “altered version” of the book to students at dozens of U.S. universities. In other words, he wants to commit mass vandalism.

According to the Huffington Post:

Cameron explains that this “very special” edition of the “Origin of Species” will include an introduction explaining “Adolf Hitler’s undeniable connection” to the theory of evolution, and highlighting “Darwin’s racism” and “his disdain for women.” Cameron’s edition also exposes the “many hoaxes” of evolutionary theory, while presenting a “balanced view of Creationism.”

Watch the video here:

And for an excellent play-by-play response, watch this:

For more of the story, see HuffPo.

Women are getting “hotter” as more beautiful women reproduce at a higher rate and have a higher proportion of girls to boys? We post, you decide:

What sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? Alan Alda posed the question to a panel of five evolution experts, including E.O. Wilson, at the World Science Festival’s “What it Means to be Human: The Enigma of Altruism.” The sold-out event took place Friday night at New York University’s Skirball Center.

The panel included anthropologists, biologists, a political scientist, and a humanitarian. They engaged in a lively debate on the intersection of genes and culture in the evolution of altruism, the enigmatic human behavior of helping strangers that seems out of step with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Clips from Alan Alda’s upcoming PBS series, “The Human Spark,” fueled the discussion.

E.O. Wilson centered the conversation by posing questions to his colleagues on stage about the impetus of the “boom” in human cognitive and social abilities that allowed us to cooperate with others (and playfully correcting them when he thought they were wrong.)

Sarah Hrdy, an anthropologist at the UC Davis, suggested that cooperation started with the need to nurture children through a long childhood. “A mother without help wouldn’t be able to rear young and survive,” she said.
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As if snails don’t get mocked enough for being so slow, evolution sure isn’t doing them any favors. It seems that evolution favors snails with a slower metabolism because they have more energy for other activities, such as growth and reproduction.

Testing the biological hypothesis of the “energetic definition of fitness,” which purports that the less energy an animal spends, the more it will have for survival and reproduction, the researchers measured the size and standard metabolic rate (the amount of energy required for maintenance) of nearly 100 garden snails. After seven months, the researchers found that surviving snails had a metabolic rate 20 percent lower than that of the dead snails—and no correlation between snail size and rate of survival.

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People may perceive sound differently, depending on how in shape they are. Researchers have previously shown that women respond to oncoming noise sooner than men, supporting the view that stronger people require less time to react to impending danger. In the latest study from Ohio, scientists say that response time is not based on someone’s gender, height, or weight, but instead, relies on how fit a person is.

“This is the first evidence that our motor system and the perception of looming sounds evolved together,” John Neuhoff, an evolutionary psychologist at the College of Wooster and lead researcher on the study, told DISCOVER. Neuhoff tested 50 people, ranging from college students to 43-year-old couch potatoes, for strength and cardiovascular fitness. He categorized his subjects based on their fitness level, measuring their pulse rate for 60 seconds after they marched for three minutes.

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Jerry Coyne—author and renowned evolutionist—thinks so:

It is the conventional wisdom in human sexuality that semen tastes bad. Anyone with minimal sexual experience knows that although many women will perform fellatio on their partners, most bridle at the thought of swallowing the ejaculate. Its flavor is frequently characterized as revoltingly bitter or salty. The “swallow or spit” dilemma faces any woman who performs such an act, and whose partner regards swallowing as a gesture of love…

Why does semen taste so foul? One answer, of course, is that the chemicals necessary to make an ejaculate effective have the side effect of tasting bad. Semen is only about 5% sperm, with the remainder of the fluid consisting of a complex mixture of compounds from the prostate gland and seminal vesicle…

But this proximate answer will not satisfy the diligent evolutionary psychologist. After all, natural selection could presumably add some sugars or good-tasting stuff to semen if it were advantageous to do so. Why does it not do so?

A moment’s reflection gives the answer.

Natural selection maintains the repugnant taste of semen so that a man’s sperm will wind up in the appropriate place: the vagina and not the stomach. So long as sperm tastes bad, women will not be tempted to swallow it, but will turn their male partner towards conventional intercourse, which of course is the only act that will produce children.

Well, there you have it! Now all we need is a way to test this hypothesis. Volunteers?

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Image: iStockphoto [not actual semen]

Despite years of fighting and ever-more-solidified scientific evidence, creationists are still gaining ground, or at least holding their own in the fight over science education. Are you tired of the incessant debate about evolution taking attention from massive issues like climate change? Think you and you alone can depict the process in a way that will change everyone’s mind? Then enter DISCOVER’s “Evolution in Two Minutes or Less” video contest and find out.

Entries must be no longer than 120 seconds, and must be submitted by noon EDT, June 1, 2009. The winner will be chosen by none other than evolution champion and celebrity (in the science realm, at least) guest judge PZ Myers. So turn on your Flip cams and start evolving!

For the complete contest rules and terms, click here.

Image: iStockPhoto

David DeWitt takes his educational duties seriously. Each year, the biology “professor” and director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University takes his class on a field trip.  Their destination is the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, where the students in his Advanced Creation Studies course can bolster their “biblical view of natural history” by viewing a “temple of evolution.” In other words, they’re going to check out the enemy.

Adding to the ludicrous quotient even more, DeWitt’s trips are part of a recent trend: Plenty of adult creationists are reportedly taking these so-called “creation vacations” too. While scientists and science-lovers everywhere were celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday, creationists saw the event as a chance to visit natural history museums, aquariums, geologic sites, and dinosaur parks to challenge evolution.

So what’s a trip to a museum like with a creationist? First, DeWitt’s class went through the fossil exhibit. His only complaint was that one of the films shown failed to discuss DNA, and only talked about amoeba. He bashed the film for being too ’80s, and called it “embarrassing” [ed. note: Oh the rich irony in that word choice].

When the class headed to the dinosaur exhibit, they had no objections—they don’t deny the existence of dinosaurs, they just believe that God created all animals on the sixth day. Never mind the fact that dinos first appeared 215 million years ago, and were wiped out about 65 million years ago. Or the plethora of fossil records  proving that birds descended from dinos.

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