Darwin was Right…after all!

Sometimes we forget that we are still evolving as people. In the grand scheme of things, time passes so slow that no generation stays around to notice — until now.  Comparing the genomes of Tibetans and Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China, biologists have found that at least 30 genes have undergone evolutionary change in the Tibetans as they adapted to life on the high plateau. Among Tibetans, they found, a set of genes evolved to cope with low oxygen levels as recently as 3,000 years ago. This, if confirmed, would be the most recent known instance of human evolution….While conducting ethnographies we often spend our time looking for quick changes in human behavior, when in fact it may be more interesting to try and identify recent shifts in human evolution and, in particular, see if the specific population we are looking at is changing genetically in response to their local conditions and surrounding culture.

This is no Spaghetti Monster at work...

The Human-Flesh Search Engine. Sherlock Holmes meets The Long Tail

Cyberposses are taking over in China — and the rest of the world. So accustomed to having Google at our fingertips, people are now sourcing one-another, like a digital network, to find people and solve problems. Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. It’s ultimately crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results. Sherlock Holmes meets The Long Tail. There is increasingly nowhere to hide in this Flat World.

You can run, but you can't hide...