Darwin Revelation - We will never know

Right now, it is impossible to completely dismiss each side of the intelligent design verses evolution argument. Growing up, I have been exposed to each side of the argument so it is difficult for me to pick one side over the other. In my earlier years of school, I remember learning about evolution and thinking how this could potentially be a way to which we have came to be how we are today. On the other side, my family always wanted to me to attend church where I learned the very basic version of many bible stories. It hasn’t been until recently where both of these situations have come together in my mind where I could make a decision based on what I already know.

Since I have become older, I have stopped attending church. I began to grow skeptical of organized religion in general, and decided that I didn’t need it to be part of my life. Even though I have made this decision, I don’t want to completely dismiss intelligent design because it is a large part of what I grew up with. While reading through Darwin’s Black Box, one argument really made an impression in my mind. “Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex. By irreducible complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by slight, successive modification of a precursor system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional” (Appleman 593). I think this argument is very solid. Our bodies function through a system of parts that work together, and we cannot live without these coordinating parts in our body. If each part relies on the other one to exist, how did they end up together if they weren’t created?

Modern science has been able to prove so much about our existence such as how things work while innovative thinkers have been able to develop the technology we use during our daily lives. Doctors can help people with diseases, while technology has advanced the equipment they use in modern medicine. In my mind, science has always been able to prove facts based on evidence, which is usually indisputable. Therefore, my beliefs are automatically drawn towards the science aspect of the argument. I also thought it was interesting that other scientists during Darwin’s time had come to similar conclusions about evolution, some were even had no connection to Darwin at all. One in particular was Charles Lyell. “For eighteen years these researchers had all been pointing to the same conclusion, namely, that the species now living had been derived by variation and generation from those which had pre-existed, and these again from others of sill older date” (Appleman 285). Because many scientists began to form similar conclusions about evolution, this gives the theory significant creditability due to the fact that it has been proved by many others and not just Darwin.

There is no doubt that Darwin has influenced the minds of everyone. Even more so, Christianity and other religions have been around for significantly longer. But even though scholars have been working in depth to prove one theory over the other, it has been my recent personal discovery that no one will truly know how we originated.

This video is fairly controversial, mainly because the narrator has strong opinions about how evolution has never been proven. I also liked it because i disagree with much of what he had to say, and because of this, was much more interested in hearing a completely different perspective. One thing I do like about this video is that he says that both intelligent design and evolution should be taught as such theories, and that no one will even know the truth for sure.



Sources

Behe, Michael. “Darwin’s Black Box.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Darwin, Charles. “Selections from Darwin’s Work.” P. 67-254 in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Lyell, Charles. “Priciples of Geology.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Cop Killer Guns

The FN 5.7 is made by FN Herstal out of Belgium. This personal defense weapon has come under a lot of attack of media scrutiny recently. It originally was made for swat teams attempting to undertake subjects that are wearing Kevlar vests and are considered armed. Because of laws made against this type of gun and it’s ammunition, it is only available for military or police use. However that is not always the case. Drug Cartels particularly along the Mexican Border are gaining notoriety for using this gun as well as other criminals that have found ways to get access to this gun.
The FN 5.7 is a personal defense weapon that is considered one of the most deadly and the easiest to use in the world of this type of weapon. It’s smaller and lighter than a 9mm and it fires 5.7 by 28mm bullets. These bullets are light and small and have the ability to penetrate most “soft” Kevlar vests and several “hard” objects as well. It is capable of penetrating several layers of sheet rock and has stood up to several tests performed by the Passaic County Sheriff’s Dept. in NJ. According to Capt. Mohamed Lostan, “We shot it into bare gelatin and it penetrated 11 inches. We then placed a vest over some gelatin and tried it again, and it penetrated 9 inches. Fired through a piece of sheetrock and into gelatin, the bullet penetrated 8¼ inches.”
There has been a lot of folklore over the years about what has been considered “Cop-Killer Guns.” This name fueled by the media has been used to describe guns like the FN 5.7. The hype started around the mid 1960’s Dr. Paul Kopsch and his colleagues began experimenting with special purpose handgun ammunition. Their goal was to develop a law enforcement round capable of penetration of harder targets like windshield glass and automobile doors. In the 1970's, the scientists produced their "KTW" handgun ammunition using steel cored bullets capable of great penetration. Following further experimentation, in 1981 they began producing bullets constructed primarily of brass. The hard brass bullets caused exceptional wear on handgun barrels, a problem combated by coating the bullets with Teflon. The Teflon coating did nothing to improve penetration; it simply reduced damage to the gun barrel.



In January of 1982, NBC Television broadcast a prime time special titled "Cop Killer Bullets." They then aired a follow up six months later and the “myth” of Cop-Killing bullets was born. There was also a lot a media attention to these guns following the killing of Jim Brady. Jim Brady, Press Secretary to Ronald Regan was shot and killed in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr., who had been arrested 4 days before purchasing the handgun on gun carrying charges and was under psychiatric care. This sparked fierce lobbying and the invention of the Brady Group, which has been the primary leader in handgun control advocacy. It eventually ended in the Brady Laws which state that background checks are now required for the purchase of handguns.
Most recently, the FN 5.7 was used in the Fort Hood shooting and has sense become the scapegoat for gun control advocates. On November 5th Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on Ft. Hood on November 5th where troops receive medical attention before being deployed or after returning from overseas. He reportedly felt as though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were targeting Muslims. Before being stopped by police, Hasan killed four commissioned officers, eight soldiers, and one civilian. Twenty-nine other people were wounded. He is now is being charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder.
This shooting along with several other cases in which the FN 5.7 and several other guns that shoot similar ammunition were used has made gun control groups and gun advocate groups spark up a new war on what’s fair, what’s dangerous, and what our second amendment rights really are.



Sources:
Casey, Mike . "Cop-Killer Bullets." 4 Oct. 2004. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .  

Hodge, Nathan. "What, Exactly, Is a ‘Cop-Killer’ Gun? (Updated)." Wired 9 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .

Humphries, Michael O. "Radical Tactical Firepower." Tactial Weapons May 2008. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .

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Jakes, Lara, and Devlin Barrett. "Rampage Gun purchased legally." The Associated Press 6 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009

McKinley Jr. , James C. "Major Held in Fort Hood Rampage is Charged with 13 Counts of Murder." The New York Times 12 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .

Stirling, Stephen. "NY: Police Confiscate "Cop Killer" Gun in Far Rockaway." New York Times 21 July 2006. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .

Darwin Revelation a.k.a. Still Credible After All These Years

In this day and age I find that practically everyone believes in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I personally adopted it in 8th grade when we were taught it in our principles of science class. The reason most believe his theory to be true is that it makes pretty good sense. For hundreds of years science has been answering our questions about the unknown. Science has allowed us to start to understand the microscopic workings of matter and our universe. If science has been answering unknowns for years, people are far more likely to accept this theory because it's backed by the scientific community, rather than a theory made up by some man in Detroit. I think Darwin's ideas are also far more believable when its greatest natural confliction, the church, works alongside scientists to try and help science explain ideas. The article "How to Teach Science to the Pope" mentions the vast resources that the church has at its disposal and how the church works with the scientific community to incorporate science into religion so that they don't conflict and end up being at each other's throats. It's hard to determine if humans have been physically evolving, there's not a lot of physical proof we can present to say we have. When it really gets down to it we've got about 3000 years of history we know a good amount of. Evolution takes place over hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to a species enemies. Even since the Roman and Egyptian empires our only real enemies are each other. We're not preyed upon by animals because we construct dwellings and have guns to protect us. Some diseases can still pose troubles but nowadays that's nothing compared to the amount of fatal diseases when there was no medicine or established medical field. We tend to not even adapt to our environment. If the environment is too cold for us to physically survive in it, instead of not going there like any normal animal might, we just throw on thick layers of clothes and bring some form of heater. This is the idea that writer and futurist Jamais Cascio puts forth in his article, "Get Smarter."

Instead of physically evolving over millennia of trial and error on a certain subject, we use our cognitive abilities to solve problems. Our most powerful evolutionary asset is definitely our brain. Our brains allowed us to make hunting easier in the past, to construct dwellings to make the condition for living better, to even develop communication systems that allow humans around to world to acquire knowledge on a subject they may want to know. For instance, and this is extreme, but say a man wanted to know how to brace his leg after he broke it in the middle of the outback with no one else around. If he has any sort of internet capable phone, and service, he could bring up his browser and look up how to brace his leg. This sort of easy access to advanced and not everyday knowledge is how we adept to hostile environments. Our almost daily immersion in knowledge can lead to some deficiencies.

Nicholas Carr's piece "Is Google making us stupid?" brings this idea to life. Nicholas opens his idea up with the topic of reading. Most of the article is true but the reading part really strikes home to me. The speed at which we can acquire practically everything we want over the internet has definitely lead me to be a little less attentive to certain activities. When at work I would usually start a task but get bored, so I'd drop the task and try to find something else to do. Being able to hop on your computer and watch a specific episode of your favorite show in about five minutes can definitely lead to impatience in boring situations. I think to myself, "I've been bleaching these tables for 15 minutes. I could've been home playing a game, doing homework, or researching. This also applies to reading and the problems some have with it. Carr said that the fast pace of information technology has made it harder for him to stay connected to a book. Where as he used to be able to read in long segments he can barely make it threw a chapter without his attention span wearing thin. The easy access digital media like videos and games have definitely made it harder for me to get started on a book, but they've made me read more overall. When I sit at my computer I always finish a game I'm playing or a video I'm watching in one sitting, if not, I pick up where I left off immediately when I can. This is how I read books now. It's harder for me to start one, but as soon as I'm reading I won't do anything else until I'm done with that book. I recently took a train trip back to Connecticut which was seven hours long, so I brought a book to read. This almost 700 page book took me about 10 hours to read. I spent the entire train ride reading, and when I got back to my house I lay down on the couch and finished the book. If there's anything that Google and the internet has done its make fun more addicting. If I'm bored I'm more fidgety, just like Carr says, but if I'm having fun I always complete what I'm doing before I move on. So just like Cascio stated, we evolve our knowledge far faster than out actual bodies. Why would our bodies need to adapt to something like polio when we can invent a cure that can be taken as a child to prevent the disease for life.

In short, I believe Darwin to be spot on in his theories basis, especially pertaining to animals even today. But humans aren't generally threatened by anything more than disease, our own creations, and our own stupidity. Maybe evolution will somehow opt out a part of our brain that makes us act without thinking. But for now we'll keep using out knowledge and studies to react to changes in our environment. Much like humans react in the recent Movie 2012 humanity knew the disaster was coming, and in about five years they constructed massive ships that could stay afloat after the world was flooded and could house a good chunk of the world's population. In less than five years, humans reacted to the "end of days" and survived it, not with evolutionary gills, but with an expansive knowledge of seafaring and structural engineering. Here I have a video that helps back up my main point of Darwin still being credible even today.



Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Cascio, Jamais. “Get Smarter”. The Atlantic, July/August 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence

Consummate proof of Darwinian evolution. Youtube. Google, 11 Nov. 2007. 30 Nov. 2009.

Mason, Michael. “How to Teach Science to the Pope”. Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C

My study of Darwin in this class has taken a new path. I’ve always thought of Darwin as an explanation of the physical world. But because technology is so prevalent in our class, I’ve begun to look at his work through that aspect. I’ve gone back and forth several times over the last few weeks on whether or not humans are effecting evolution for the better or worse. I’ve thought about the angle that more people are living and we have more of our species and therefore our species is dominant. But I can’t ignore the fact that there also is a component about competition between members of the same species. I feel also as though human intelligence has been the species greatest asset. I come to realize because of explanations by Darwin, that intelligence has become the most helpful and the most hazardous aspect of a human’s evolution.

In terms of the medical field, human knowledge has made significant leaps and bounds even in the last thirty years. Humans have become better at surviving and therefore are better at the ultimate goal of evolution, reproduction. They have also become more successful in ensuring that contraception can take place so their genes will be passed on to the next generation. Humans are constantly trying to medically bypass the natural selection of genes by “outsmarting nature.” It is no longer what you are born with but how resourceful you can be. Humans have found ways to make them more attractive, stronger, and more fertile by means personal intelligence or the intelligence of others. So in one sense we have aided natural selection in the respect that we increase our chances of our genes surviving to the next generation, and have found ways to make sure that certain traits are selected for. However we have also taken the job away from natural selection the short term in the sense that we have used our intelligence to live longer, have more children and artificially make ourselves more attractive to our potential mates. For example, we are no longer dying of certain genetic diseases. Certain diseases or “undesirable” traits are being continued to be passed on because medical science is treating them, therefore bypassing natural selection that would have had those genes die before they were able to reproduce. We are selecting to have these genes be passed on and thereby hindering the species. Furthermore, a natural way of keeping population down has been taken away. According to Thomas Malthus, the earth will not be able to support an ever-expanding population. Because the population is living longer and dying less due to medical advances we are changing the face of the evolution of the planet as well as ourselves. We have taken away a fundamental genetic “check” on the population by treating certain diseases. And because our species isn’t dying we are putting additional stress on other species because the planet is not an infinite resource for us to exploit.

Technology has also been a savior and a hazard to evolution. Humans have used their intelligence to build buildings, shape landscapes, and set up permanent residences. Humans have effectively used their technology to forever change the landscape of this Earth. Because of that change they have bettered themselves as a species in the sense that they are able to take most advantage of the natural resources available therefore allowing there genes to have a better chance of getting passed on. However, with this also comes the question of whether technology is our own form of Evolution that will eventually make our species obsolete. As Phillip K. Dick has pointed out, technology can go just as horribly wrong as it can do good. We cannot pretend that we are the only species affected by our interference with evolution. In “Evolutions and the Origins of Disease” by Randolph Nesse and George Williams, they explain the evolution of the HIV virus as it relates to the human race. They explain that we are more prone to treating the virulent strains of HIV that will kill thereby selecting for the less lethal ones that won’t by developing medical defenses and preventative measures. It then becomes about subsistence and the viruses that don’t kill are more likely to survive because their host is surviving longer. They say that, “our collective choices can change the very nature of HIV.” (Nesse, 462) The human race does not often think of how it’s choices effect other organisms. People tend to think that technology is only for humans and that it has no use or effect on other organisms. However if simple choices such as using a clean needle can have that dramatic an effect on viruses it’s terrifying to think what our other more significant choices have on other species. Our instinct tells us that it is better for our species to survive and our intelligence gives us the technology to do so. However, in that use of our technology we have unfortunately wiped out, altered, and hindered other species. Our intelligence is easily our greatest asset. We however have not evolved it enough to know how to use it with out being destructive to everything around us.

Sources:

Dick Philip K. The Philip K. Dick Reader, New York: Citadel Press. 1987.

Malthus, Thomas Robert. "An Essay on the Principle of Population." in Darwin 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001

Nesse, Randolph M and George C. Williams. "Evolution and the Origins of Disease." in Darwin 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001

Didn't catch a break yet

I have a video of some readings here telling us about what Darwin and his colleagues thought of women. The person reads some exerts from some of Darwin's work that have to do with women and how they are looked upon by men, and society as a whole.

Watch Darwinism and Women in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

This video has to do with my paper because i am discussing the roles of women before and after the whole evolution idea was found.

"Darwinism and Women | Creation / Evolution | Veoh." Free Videos Online - Watch TV Online - Free Video Clips | Veoh. Web. 30 Nov. 2009.

The De-Evolution of Man

The De-Evolution of Man

In the dawn of mankind, humans had to live like animals in comparison with modern society. The people had two simple goals: to stay alive and to procreate. If an individual could not meet these goals then he or she would die. In this fashion, the humans that lived on had traits and abilities that would reach the two goals and those characteristics would be passed on to the next generation. It is from these traits that the human race as strived and fought to survive over the millennia. Some of these characteristics that have passed through the generations can be seen today like how humans pick mates. Proof of this natural selection of mankind can be found in the human body in vestigial organs, such as the appendix and the tailbone. The appendix was used to digest plant matter in earlier humans and the tailbone is a remnant of previous ancestors that had tails. In general, traits and parts that were less beneficial to the survival of the individual were replaced and gradually decayed so that only valuable genes would survive. This is, however, until the dawn of the modern age of technology, when the strongest were not the only ones who would survive.

The drive of science has always been curiosity and with that motivation many discoveries have been made. The drive of technology is to take those discoveries and make them useful to society. From suits of armor for protection to automobiles and planes for faster travel to the internet for connecting with other people all around the world, technology would lead to innovations that would be used to expand the capabilities of people. However, like the less useful traits of the ancestors, the ability to complete tacks without the use of these innovations has been slowly decaying. Nicholas Carr has also noticed this trend in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” In the article, Carr writes about his realization that the over-usage of Google and skimming articles online was starting to hinder his ability to read for extended lengths of time. Carr then goes on to describe how other individuals had discovered this as well such as Bruce Friedman who was quoted saying “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” “I’ve lost the ability to do that.” (Nicholas Carr). This trend that Carr found and brought into the light cannot even be considered something to pass through genes to the next generation. However, this is a great example of how the traits would decay as more useful ones would replace them. Carr might struggle with reading a long book, but he has access to Google and instant information on the internet.

As with Carr’s article, not all traits that decay are useless ones, just less advantageous than others that will be passed on. This is what many science fiction stories try to warn the public, because once a trait has decayed to a certain point, it would be very difficult to reacquire it. The perfect example for this is the Philip K. Dick story, “Pay for the Printer”. In this story the population has become reliant on an alien race known as Biltongs that can make perfect copies of anything that only last for a short while. When the Biltongs become extinct, the humans have to try and relearn all the skills of building and making that were lost with the ease of copying items (Dick 239). Even tasks that had been learned by the first humans to survive like finding food, making clothing and lighting a fire had been lost with the over use of the aliens. This is the fear society expects, to become so reliant on something that humans will lose their own abilities and if that tool would ever be taken away, humans would be helpless to survive.

Dick wrote another story called “Strange Eden” where adventurers find a strange planet full of plants and animals that seemed like paradise. One of the crew members decides to walk around and explore the surface and winds up meeting an alien that is so evolved she became an immortal. Brent the crew member is given the choice to stay with her and go through a rapid evolution or to leave. Brent goes with human instinct and stays with her. The captain of the ship encounters the alien who tells him to leave the planet without Brent, who has evolved into a lion like creature (Dick 111). In this story Dick wonders if the next evolution of man will actually be a step backwards. The progression of mankind has steadily been decreasing with the reliance on technology and if people keep losing their abilities to survive without reliance and the technology was ever taken away, that society will resort back to primitive ways.

In both of these ideas, the human race is not heading in a positive direction. To either become toddlers that can survive without support of someone or something or devolve back into the animal kingdom. It is not only science fiction that is portraying this fear. In the last few years, two movies have come out that really portray this warning to the audience. The first movie is Wall-E where the background is that the Earth became inhabitable and humans fled into space where they were pampered into obese sloths. The other movie is Idiocracy where in the year 2505 the entire population of Earth has become idiots due to their reliance on technology and a theory of lesser intelligent people having many more kids than more intelligent people. In Idiocracy the planet is filled with trash and simple problems like plants not growing because they are being watered with Gatorade are beyond the population. In both movies, the hero does their best to help the populace start a better life, either by returning to Earth or by having a competent leader.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Dick, Philip K. "Pay for the Printer." pp 239-252 in The Philip K. Dick Reader, New York: Citadel Press. 1987

Dick, Philip K. "Strange Eden." pp 111-122 in The Philip K. Dick Reader, New York: Citadel Press. 1987

Idiocracy. Dir. Mike Judge. Perf. Luke Wilson and Dax Shepard. 20th Century Fox, 2006. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Garibaldi1967, 12 Dec. 2007. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. .

Wall-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Perf. Jeff Garlin and Sigourney Weaver. Pixar Animation Studios, 2008. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Johnpasma, 5 Nov. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. .

Darwin Revelations
Through our recent studies of Darwin within Cor-220 I have come to better understand Darwin’s findings and idea’s in a much clearer light than I have previously before. I have adapted his concepts, theories and beliefs to structure my own personal revelation on modern day evolution and how it has changed since his time. That revelation is as follows; evolution is still the same but for humanity it has been taken away from nature and put in control of our two hands. Evolution works differently and much more rapidly on the modern day human as the vast quantities of information continues to build up and affect us all. It is no longer an internal change of DNA but rather the external modification of us. It is our new form of adaptation, to get smarter and learn more rather than wait for evolution to pick what is right for us. In the article “Get Smarter” by Jamais Cascio, she states:

“WE’VE been augmenting our ability to think for millennia. When we developed written language, we significantly increased our functional memory and our ability to share insights and knowledge across time and space. The same thing happened with the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the radio. The rise of urbanization allowed a fraction of the populace to focus on more-cerebral tasks—a fraction that grew inexorably as more-complex economic and social practices demanded more knowledge work, and industrial technology reduced the demand for manual labor. And caffeine and nicotine, of course, are both classic cognitive-enhancement drugs, primitive though they may be.”

This is an important aspect of humanity that most people never seem to consider. We have freed ourselves from evolutions grasp and found other ways to more rapidly adapt. There is so much information out there that we cannot simply know it all anymore. The internet is one of those external adaptations that has affected us so greatly on not only how we gather information but how we learn/record that information and even our cognitive process. We can longer read every little detail and word out there on the page, we have to skim through and pick out the important stuff to keep moving, there simply just isn’t enough time out there to absorb it all if you were to read it all.

Some people on the other hand feel that this is making us stupid rather than smarter. Author Nicholas Carr, writer of the article “Is Google making us stupid?” claims that “…And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Saying that he has some form of constant ADD. It could be seen that the internet is making us stupid but is it really or is it just a radical change in how we think and an adaptation to how we can further understand and learn more in much less time? According to an article that interviews Stephan Hawking, it would take 15,000 years to read all the books in a national library which by the time you finish there will be many more made. (Casey Kazan) He further goes on to explain the concept of the external transmission phase” where evolution applies to the external transmission of information through databases down to the next generation as a form of evolution, thus allowing quicker pace of evolution through our own hands. (Casey Kazan)

Lastly, here is a link to a Youtube video about how we “find, store, create and share” information from the beginning to now.

I chose this video for the reason that it clearly shows how much information is around on just the internet alone and helps people grasp why it should be considered a part of our evolution. Simply because we do not loose information between generations anymore, it continues to grow to a point to when we can simply control our genetics and modify our beings to new heights. It also demonstrates that if we were to not have this information stored digitally how inefficient the entire system for finding information would be. We have reached a point where information is so readily available that it can allow for the forgetfulness of certain things since they can be simply reacquired so easily.

Works Cited
The Atlantic. July & aug. 2008. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. .

The Atlantic. July & aug. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. .

Information R/evolution. Youtube. Google, 12 Oct. 2007. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. .

Kazan, Casey. "Stephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution"" The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel. 3 July 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. .