3005. Florida's Invasive Pythons Are Mostly Cousins

By Science Daily, August 25, 2018

A new genetic analysis of invasive pythons captured across South Florida finds the big constrictors are closely related to one another. In fact, most of them are genetically related as first or second cousins, according to a study by wildlife genetics experts at the U.S. Geological Survey.

The study also found that at least a few of the snakes in the invasive South Florida population are not 100 percent Burmese pythons. Instead, the genetic evidence shows at least 13 snakes out of about 400 studied are a cross between two separate species: Burmese pythons, which mostly inhabit wetlands, and Indian pythons, which prefer higher ground. The interbreeding between Burmese and Indian pythons probably took place before the animals became established in the South Florida environment, and may have given them greater adaptability in their new habitats.

The South Florida pythons spring from a tangled family tree, with consequences for the species' future spread that are hard to predict, the USGS scientists said.

"The snakes in South Florida are physically identifiable as Burmese pythons, but genetically, there seems to be a different, more complicated story," said Margaret Hunter, a USGS research geneticist and lead author on the study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Burmese pythons have been reproducing in the Everglades since the 1980s, and have caused important environmental changes including the decline of small-mammal populations in South Florida.

The researchers analyzed tail tissue from about 400 Burmese pythons captured across a wide area, from southwest Florida and the Big Cypress National Preserve to the Everglades, southeast Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys, between 2001 and 2012.

The researchers looked at nuclear DNA, which contains genetic material from both parents, to determine how much each animal had in common with others in the population. To express family relationships in statistical terms, they used a common type of calculation known as a relatedness value. 

For all snakes in the study, the average relatedness value was about midway between first and second cousins. That close kinship means the population as a whole is experiencing inbreeding, the researchers concluded.

When the researchers tested genetic material from a different part of the snakes' cells-mitochondrial DNA, inherited solely from the mother-they were surprised to find genetic signatures from the Indian python in 13 snakes.

Sometimes interbreeding between related species "can lead to hybrid vigor, that is, the best traits of two species are passed onto their offspring," Hunter said. "Hybrid vigor can potentially lead to a better ability to adapt to environmental stressors and changes. In an invasive population like the Burmese pythons in South Florida, this could result in a broader or more rapid distribution."

In the wild, related species typically avoid interbreeding by using different habitats. In their native Asia, Burmese pythons prefer wet habitats, while Indian pythons tend to stick to drier ones. In previous studies, scientists have observed South Florida's Burmese pythons in both wet and dry habitat types.

"Our ability to detect Burmese pythons in the Greater Everglades has been limited by their effective camouflage and secretive behavior," said Kristen Hart, a USGS research ecologist and a co-author on the study. "By using genetic tools and techniques and continuing to monitor their movement patterns, we have been able to gain a better understanding of their habitat preferences and resource use. The new information in this study will help scientists and wildlife managers better understand these invasive predators' capacity to adapt to new environments."

Journal Reference:
Margaret E. Hunter, Nathan A. Johnson, Brian J. Smith, Michelle C. Davis, John S. S. Butterfield, Ray W. Snow, Kristen M. Hart. Cytonuclear discordance in the Florida Everglades invasive Burmese python (Python bivittatus) population reveals possible hybridization with the Indian python (P. molurus). Ecology and Evolution, 2018; DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4423

3004. Early humans Living At Least 500,000 Years Ago Had Anatomically Modern Human-Like Hands

By David Keys, Independent, August 23, 2018

A beautifully crafted flint hand axe made by prehistoric toolmakers at Boxgrove, West Sussex, half a million years ago.

Evidence from a quarry in southern England is shedding extraordinary new light on the evolution of human intelligence.

Arguably, the most important driving force that enabled early humans to evolve into ever more intelligent creatures was the human hand, which gave us the physical ability to make things.

Without that crucial ability, there would never have been the need to imagine and visualise complex objects purely in the mind, or the ability to then invent, manufacture and use them.

Stone Age Britons may have had prehistoric secret code

Now archaeologists have demonstrated for the first time that a particular type of stone tool used some half a million years ago could not have been made without modern human-like hands.

The study – based on beautifully made prehistoric tools found at Boxgrove in West Sussex – reveals for the first time that early Stone Age humans had modern-style human hands, despite the fact that they belonged to a human species ancestral to our own but which became extinct more than 300,000 years ago.

Research in the UK and the US supports the concept that early human intellectual ability was largely developed in tandem with, and to a considerable extent courtesy of, hand evolution – and that eventually we (Homo sapiens) inherited our super-dextrous hands from prehistoric humans, which existed before the Neanderthals.

The specific stone tools which were analysed as part of the study were sophisticated flint hand axes, which had required a special technique to shape them.

The technique is known to prehistorians as ‘platform preparation’. In most very early stone tools, the manufacturing process is a simple single-stage affair in which the toolmaker merely hits a lump of flint with a stone repeatedly to systematically knock bits off it until the lump has been reduced to a desired shape.

However, more sophisticated toolmakers employed a two-stage approach. First they would successively "soften up" small portions of the flint’s surface, so as to then be able to more accurately remove flakes from it, thus creating a much more sophisticated and effective tool with a better and more refined cutting edge.

By attaching electronic sensors to the hands of skilled modern flint knappers, archaeologists from the University of Kent were able to demonstrate that "platform preparation" – and thus more sophisticated stone tools – was only achievable by prehistoric people equipped with anatomically modern human-like hands.

The study, led by Dr Alastair Key of the university’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, and funded by the British Academy, investigated how hands were used during the production of different types of early stone tools.

The research demonstrates that the Boxgrove early humans probably had significantly stronger grips compared to earlier populations.

It reveals that by 500,000 BC, humans had the physical capability needed to make sophisticated hand axes.

This in turn implies that they were also theoretically able to make a large range of other artefacts that required strong, dextrous hands – things made out of wood, antler and bone, as well as stone.

“Our experimental research not only suggests that early humans at least 500,000 years ago had anatomically modern human-like hands, but, when combined with other recent research, can also help us understand the way in which the human hand, brain and other anatomical elements co-evolved,” said Dr Key.

Although the fact that sophisticated tool manufacture could only be done with modern-human-like hands was demonstrated by the Boxgrove research, another set of similarly sophisticated tools have recently been found in South Africa (also dating from around 500,000 years ago) – and there are indications that "platform preparation" (the crucial diagnostic sophisticated technique) was being used for stone tool manufacture in Ethiopia as early as 850,000 years ago.

So the Boxgrove, the South African and the Ethiopian evidence now helps demonstrate quite clearly that humanity developed its manual dexterity, its intelligence and its manufacturing ability as part of a long interactive process across at least two and probably three continents.

Early (and indeed modern) humans were (and still are) not physically the strongest or even the fastest animals around. So, in order to survive, they had to evolve ways of administering physical force through their hands in ever more efficient ways. They needed to do that in order to hunt and gather more efficiently, in order to butcher prey more efficiently and in order to defend themselves against other animals (including other humans).

Over thousands of generations, the need to apply physical force more efficiently drove changes, through natural selection, in the shape and design of their hands.

Ultimately the process resulted in hands that could make sophisticated tools, weapons and other artefacts – and, in time, that physical ability to make things in turn allowed and drove additional evolutionary changes in their brains to enable them to even more effectively envisage and invent the ever more sophisticated items they needed to help them survive and flourish. The rest was history, as they say.

Just how intellectually able they had become by 500,000BC has been revealed by a recent experiment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Using the Boxgrove hand-axes as exemplars, 20 students and others were tasked with learning the tool-making skills to replicate them. It took, on average, 200-250 hours for each modern novice toolmaker to learn how to do it.

3003. Amazon Tribe Never Seen by Outsiders Is Spotted by Drone

By Richard Pérez-Peña, The New York Times, August 23, 2018

New video footage from a drone shows the first images of members of an isolated Amazon tribe that had no known contact with the outside world, the Brazilian government said this week.

The video, released on Wednesday, shows a clearing of felled trees in the Javary River valley, near Brazil’s border with Peru, and figures walking through it, one of them carrying what appears to be a spear or pole. The images were captured by an expedition by the National Indian Foundation, a government agency commonly known as Funai.

The agency also released still photos taken by a team on the ground, including images of canoes made of hollowed-out palm tree trunks and an ax with a stone blade tied to a wooden handle, along with an aerial photo of a thatched hut.

The region has eight indigenous peoples who have had some contact with the outside world, and at least 11 others without any known contact, Funai said in a statement. The agency said its team had traveled more than 110 miles in “boats, trucks, motorcycles” and about 75 miles “on foot through dense forest” to reach the location.

The team, accompanied by the police, caught two groups of outsiders hunting illegally, and found a landowner and farmers encroaching illegally on land reserved for indigenous groups, Funai added.

Such encroachment and destruction of the rainforest, often accompanied by violence against the indigenous peoples, threaten their survival.\

Last month, Funai released video of a man in another part of Brazil who is thought to be the last surviving member of his tribe.

3002. Humans Are Blind to Imminent Environmental Collapse

By William E. Reese, The Tyee, November 16, 2017

Curious thing about H. sapiens is that we are clever enough to document — in exquisite detail — various trends that portend the collapse of modern civilization, yet not nearly smart enough to extricate ourselves from our self-induced predicament.

This was underscored once again in October when scientists reported that flying insect populations in Germany have declined by an alarming 75 percent in the past three decades accompanied, in the past dozen years, by a 15 percent drop in bird populations. Trends are similar in other parts of Europe where data are available. Even in Canada, everything from casual windshield “surveys” to formal scientific assessments show a drop in insect numbers. Meanwhile, domestic populations of many insect-eating birds are in freefall. Ontario has lost half its whip-poor-wills in the past 20 years; across the nation, such species as nighthawks, swallows, martins, and fly-catchers are down by up to 75 percent; Greater Vancouver’s barn and bank swallows have plummeted by 98 percent since 1970. Heard much about these things in the mainstream news?

Too bad. Biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century. It is caused by many individual but interacting factors — habitat loss, climate change, intensive pesticide use and various forms of industrial pollution, for example, suppress both insect and bird populations. But the overall driver is what an ecologist might call the “competitive displacement” of non-human life by the inexorable growth of the human enterprise.

On a finite planet where millions of species share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species necessarily drives the contraction and extinction of others. (Politicians take note — there is always a conflict between human population/economic expansion and “protection of the environment.”)

Remember the 40 to 60 million bison that used to roam the great plains of North America? They — along with the millions of deer, pronghorns, wolves and lesser beasts that once animated prairie ecosystems — have been “competitively displaced,” their habitats taken over by a much greater biomass of humans, cattle, pigs and sheep. And not just North Americans — Great Plains sunshine also supports millions of other people-with-livestock around the world who depend, in part on North American grain, oil-seed, pulse and meat exports.

Competitive displacement has been going on for a long time. Scientists estimate that at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, H. sapiens comprised less than one per cent of the total weight of mammals on the planet. (There were probably only two to four million people on Earth at the time.) Since then, humans have grown to represent 35 percent of a much larger total biomass; toss in domestic pets and livestock, and human domination of the world’s mammalian biomass rises to 98.5 percent!

One needs to look no further to explain why wildlife populations globally have plunged by nearly 60 per cent in the past half-century. Wild tigers have been driven from 93 per cent of their historic range and are down to fewer than 4,000 individuals globally; the population of African elephants has imploded by as much as 95 per cent to only 500,000 today; poaching drove black rhino numbers from an already much reduced 70,000 in 1960 to only 2,500 individuals in the early 1990s. (With intense conservation effort, they have since rebounded to about 5,000). And those who still think Canada is still a mostly pristine and under-populated wilderness should think again — half the wildlife species regularly monitored in this country are in decline, with an average population drop of 83 percent since 1970. Did I mention that B.C.’s southern resident killer whale population is down to only 76 animals? That’s in part because human fishers have displaced the orcas from their favoured food, Chinook salmon, even as we simultaneously displace the salmon from their spawning streams through hydro dams, pollution, and urbanization.

The story is similar for familiar species everywhere and likely worse for non-charismatic fauna. Scientists estimate that the “modern” species extinction rate is 1,000 to as much as 10,000 times the natural background rate. The global economy is busily converting living nature into human bodies and domestic livestock largely unnoticed by our increasingly urban populations. Urbanization distances people psychologically as well as spatially from the ecosystems that support them.

The human band-wagon may really have started rolling 10 millennia ago but the past two centuries of exponential growth greatly have accelerated the pace of change. It took all of human history — let’s say 200,000 years — for our population to reach one billion in the early 1800s, but only 200 years, 1/1000th as much time, to hit today’s 7.6 billion! Meanwhile, material demand on the planet has ballooned even more — global GDP has increased by over 100-fold since 1800; average per capita incomes by a factor of 13. (rising to 25-fold in the richest countries). Consumption has exploded accordingly — half the fossil fuels and many other resources ever used by humans have been consumed in just the past 40 years. (See graphs in: Steffen, W et al. 2015. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, page(s): 81-98.)

Why does any of this matter, even to those who don’t really give a damn about nature per se? Apart from the moral stain associated with extinguishing thousands of other life-forms, there are purely selfish reasons to be concerned. For example, depending on climate zone, 78 percent to 94 percent of flowering plants, including many human food species, are pollinated by insects, birds and even bats. (Bats — also in trouble in many places — are the major or exclusive pollinators of 500 species in at least 67 families of plants.) As much as 35 percent of the world’s crop production is more or less dependent on animal pollination, which ensures or increases the production of 87 leading food crops worldwide.

But there is a deeper reason to fear the depletion and depopulation of nature. Absent life, planet earth is just an inconsequential wet rock with a poisonous atmosphere revolving pointlessly around an ordinary star on the outer fringes of an undistinguished galaxy. It is life itself, beginning with countless species of microbes, that gradually created the “environment” suitable for life on Earth as we know it. Biological processes are responsible for the life-friendly chemical balance of the oceans; photosynthetic bacteria and green plants have stocked and maintain Earth’s atmosphere with the oxygen necessary for the evolution of animals; the same photosynthesis gradually extracted billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, storing it in chalk, limestone and fossil fuel deposits, so that Earth’s average temperature (currently about 15 C) has remained for geological ages in the narrow range that makes water-based life possible, even as the sun has been warming (i.e. stable climate is partially a biological phenomenon.); countless species of bacteria, fungi and a veritable menagerie of micro-fauna continuously regenerate the soils that grow our food. (Unfortunately, depletion-by-agriculture is even faster — by some accounts we have only just over a half-century’s worth of arable soils left).

In short, H. sapiens depends utterly on a rich diversity of life-forms to provide various life-support functions essential to the existence and continued survival of human civilization. With an unprecedented human-induced great global die-off well underway, what are the chances the functional integrity of the ecosphere will survive the next doubling of material consumption that everyone expects before mid-century?

Here’s the thing: climate change is not the only shadow darkening humanity’s doorstep. While you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media, biodiversity loss arguably poses an equivalent existential threat to civilized existence. While we’re at it, let’s toss soil/landscape degradation, potential food or energy shortages and other resource limits into the mix. And if you think we’ll probably be able to “handle” four out of five such environmental problems, it doesn’t matter. The relevant version of Liebig’s Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor in least supply (and we haven’t yet touched upon the additional risks posed by the geopolitical turmoil that would inevitably follow ecological destabilization).

Which raises questions of more than mere academic interest. Why are we not collectively terrified or at least alarmed? If our best science suggests we are en route to systems collapse, why are collapse — and collapse avoidance — not the primary subjects of international political discourse? Why is the world community not engaged in vigorous debate of available initiatives and trans-national institutional mechanisms that could help restore equilibrium to the relationship between humans and the rest of nature?

There are many policy options, from simple full-cost pricing and consumption taxes; through population initiatives and comprehensive planning for a steady-state economy; to general education for voluntary (and beneficial) lifestyle changes, all of which would enhance global society’s prospects for long-term survival. Unique human qualities, from high intelligence (e.g., reasoning from the evidence), through the capacity to plan ahead to moral consciousness, may well be equal to the task but lie dormant — there is little hint of political willingness to acknowledge the problem let alone elaborate genuine solutions (which the Paris climate accord is not).

Bottom line? The world seems in denial of looming disaster; the “C” word remains unvoiced. Governments everywhere dismissed the 1992 scientists’ Warning to Humanity that “…a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided” and will similarly ignore the scientists’ “second notice.” (Published on Nov. 13, this warning states that most negative trends identified 25 years earlier “are getting far worse.”) Despite cascading evidence and detailed analysis to the contrary, the world community trumpets “growth-is-us” as its contemporary holy grail. Even the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are fixed on economic expansion as the only hammer for every problematic nail. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases reach to at an all-time high, marine dead-zones proliferate, tropical forests fall and extinctions accelerate.

Just what is going on here? The full explanation of this potentially fatal human enigma is no doubt complicated, but Herman Melville summed it up well enough in Moby Dick: “There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;"> William Rees, FRSC is a professor at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC.

3001. How Sexism Follows Women From the Cradle to the Workplace

By Jim Tankersley, The New York Times, August 19, 2018

White women born in parts of the United States where sexist attitudes are more prevalent grow up to earn less and to work less than women born elsewhere, relative to men born in those same states, new economic research shows.

That impact on career and salary continues even if those women move to less sexist areas as adults, a finding that suggests the beliefs a woman grows up with can shape her future behavior in a way that affects her career and salary.

The research, which will be released as a working paper on Monday from the economists Kerwin Kofi Charles of the University of Chicago, Jonathan Guryan of Northwestern University and Jessica Pan of National University of Singapore, highlights a continued divergence across the United States in social attitudes about the role of women in the workforce. It shows how much location — where a woman is born and where she chooses to live as an adult — matters for her work and pay.

Perhaps most strikingly, the study finds that a woman’s lifelong earnings and how much she works are influenced by the levels of sexism in the state where she was born. A woman born in the Deep South is likely to face a much wider economic gender gap than a woman born on the Pacific Coast, the research shows, even if both women move to New York as adults.

“That’s the first shocking thing,” Mr. Charles, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, said in an interview, “just how large and persistent the differences are.”

To make sure they were focusing only on gender, and not racial, discrimination, the researchers studied only white adults. While the researchers expect that the same gender gaps apply to other demographics, they were unsure how much of the disparity could be attributed to racial — versus gender — discrimination.

The economists drew upon decades of statistics from the Census Bureau and the General Social Survey, a poll that repeats questions over time and documents changing American attitudes on a wide range of issues.

The researchers tracked responses to eight questions about the role of women in society, including the degree to which Americans agreed that “Women should take care of running their home and leave running the country up to men” and “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and women takes care of the home and family.” The more a respondent agreed that women should not work outside the home or participate in politics, or could not effectively juggle career and family responsibilities, the more “sexist” the researchers judged the answers to be.

Levels of sexism varied widely by state. They have declined across the board over time, but the differences between states have persisted. The researchers found that sexist attitudes are most prevalent in the southeast and least prevalent on the West Coast. The Midwest varies: Ohio has relatively low levels of sexism, while neighboring Indiana is relatively high.

The census data on the labor market show a persistent gap in what white men and women earn and how much they participate in the labor force, though that gap has narrowed over time. But that gender gap varies by states — and it’s that variation that helped the researchers isolate the effects of sexism, by place.

The researchers looked at men and women who were born in the same state and then moved to the same state, like North Carolinians who moved to New York, or Texans who moved to Colorado. They found that the gap in wages and employment between men and women in those groups was bigger for those who were born in states with higher levels of sexism.

They also find that, compared with women around them who were born elsewhere, the women born in more “sexist” places marry and have their first child “at appreciably younger ages.” Another recent paper, in which Ms. Pan was also one of the writers, found a sharp decline in employment for women after their first child is born, and also that women’s attitudes toward gender roles grow more traditional after a birth.

Mr. Charles, Mr. Guryan and Ms. Pan found that the results held even when controlling for age, education and migration patterns, which is to say, Americans historically tend to move to states close to their state of birth as adults, if they move at all.

The research cannot say for certain why those differences persist. The economists say that women appear to internalize social norms when they are young on issues like when to have children, what tasks are appropriate for women in the work force or even how much society values the work of women.

Those traits could, in turn, affect a woman’s willingness to bargain for higher wages. “We know that whatever it is, must be something of a product of where they’re from, and continues to affect them now,” Mr. Charles said. “A notable example here might be the willingness to ask for raises, or the willingness to confront a manager over a raise that was too small. A woman imbued with her value in the marketplace is likely to reject an insufficient raise.”

Those internalized norms appear to have affected a young woman named Nicole, who grew up in Indiana, earned a business degree and a master’s in information systems, and left her home state to build a career. Nicole, who asked that her last name and current employer not be identified, said she has struggled with the assertiveness needed to ask for a raise or a higher starting salary.

By the time she started as a consultant at a large accounting firm, some of her high school friends were married, ready for children, working part-time or not at all. Nicole said she was working harder than many of her colleagues and wondering why she earned less than they did. “Sometimes, my male job recruiter friends are like, ‘Why don’t you just ask? When someone offers you a job, they expect you to negotiate,’” she said. “Whereas my friends and I, we’re just happy to have job offers. It didn’t cross my mind that you negotiate.”

Internalizing a culture that does not value women working outside the home, or that makes a woman’s role as a mother a priority, could also discourage women from working longer and less flexible hours. The Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin has found that much of the gender gap in pay comes from differences within occupations, such as law and medicine, where men are rewarded for their disproportionate willingness to work long hours and agree to be on call when they are off duty.

Birthplace matters no matter where women move as adults. But where they settle matters, too, the research shows.

Nicole, for example, went to work in a large Southern city, where she quickly learned she needed to study college football every weekend just to participate in company discussions on Monday. Male colleagues expected her to take notes in meetings, even though she held a leadership position, she said. Male clients would interrupt her, or wouldn’t look her in the eye.

Her experience tracks with the study’s findings that the sexism in the places where women live and work as adults affects them — but those effects are divided by gender.

Women are more likely to marry and have children early when they are surrounded by other women who hold more “sexist” views on the appropriateness of women working outside the home, the study shows; the views of men don’t seem to matter to that calculation. When it comes to employment and wages, though, women don’t seem to be affected by the views of other women around them.

But when the men around them are more sexist, women work less, and they earn less — an effect the researchers ascribed to old-fashioned discrimination.

3000. Summary and Index for the Past 99 Posts

By Kamran Nayeri, August 23, 2018

Assistant Editor, Siah.

Of the last 99 posts, 20 were about socialism/ecosocialism, 12 were about Karl Marx and his theories, nine were about capitalism and eight about the Anthropocene. Eight were about biology, seven about ecocide, and six about climate change.  There were three articles about the Nicaraguan crisis. 

Hyperlinks to posts follow:

2900. Summary and Index for the Past 99 Posts

2901. Nancy Fraser: Marx and Feminism

2902. Marx’s Open-Ended Critique

2903. Ecstasy as Treatment for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

2904. Joel Kovel (1936-2018): An Appreciation

2905. Review Essay: Revolution, Workers, and Everyday Life in Cuba

2906. The Population Bomb, Fifty Years Later: A Conversation with Paul Ehrlich

2907. Dr. Joel Kovel, a Pioneer of Ecosocialism, Is Dead at 81

2908. Antonio Gramsci: Our Marx

2909. The birds, the bees, and Holden Caulfield

2910. Audio: Police: The Field Guide

2911. Global Tourism Carbon Footprint Quantified in World First

2912. David Goodall, 104, Scientist Who Fought to Die on His Terms, Ends His Life

2913. Karl Marx on Automation

2914. Farewell to George

2915. Book Review: Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution

2916. Permaculture: David Holmgren's ‘Frugal Hedonism’

2917. Capitalism and the Expropriation of Nature: The Strategic Discourse of Ecosocialism

2918. 11th Day of Activities Against Homophobia and Transphobia in Cuba

2919. Charlie Russell, Who Befriended Bears, Dies at 76

2920. Synthetic Biology Gone Out of Control

2921. Marx and Human Nature

2922. The Problem of Human Nature and Marx-Bakunin Conflict

2923. Edward Burtynsky: The Photographer of the Anthropocene

2924. Every Cell in Your Body Has the Same DNA. Except It Doesn’t.

2925. Tiny Brains of Extinct Human Relative Had Complex Features

2926. The Man Who Saved Havana

2927. Paul Ehrlich: 'Collapse of Civilization Is a Near Certainty Within Decades

2928. Wilbur Ross: "That Moon Colony Will Be a Reality Sooner Than You Think"

2929. The Silence of the Bugs

2930. The Self-Immolation of David Buckel

2931. Marx’s Ecological Notebooks

2932. Erich Fromm: Marx's Concept of Socialism

2933. Marxism, Morality, and Human Nature

2934. Book Review: Behemoth

2935. Organic Insect Deterrent for Agriculture

2936. Big Data Little Help in Megafauna Mysteries

2937. How Big Is the Gig Economy?

2938. Book Review: Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis

2939. Thousands Years Old Giant African Baobab Trees Die Suddenly

2940. Teachers’ Class-Struggle Defiance Inspires Millions

2941. Earth Will Survive. We May Not.

2942. Capitalism, Automation, and Socialism: Karl Marx on the Labor Process

2943. How Wildlife Crossings Are Slowing Down Roadkill

2944. Book Review: The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and Environment

2945. Mammals Go Nocturnal in Bid to Avoid Humans

2946. Men Are Different; Here Is "Y"

2947. Buddhism and Marxism: Points of Intersection

2948. Long Waves of Fossil Development: Periodizing Energy and Capital

2949. As many as 600 Million Face Water Scarcity in India

2950. The Bugs Are Winning

2951. The Bacteria Babies Need

2952. Nigeria’s Farmers and Herders Fight a Deadly Battle for Scarce Resources

2953. 2017 Was the Second Worst Year on Record for Tropical Forests

2954. Join the International Campaign to Free Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian Political Prisoner

2955. Artificial Nature: Deleting a Species

2956. Norman Thomas and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

2957. Metabolic Rift and the Human Microbiome

2958. Book Review: Money and Totality

2959. Book Review: A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism

2960. Red-Hot Planet: All-Time Heat Records All Over the World

2961. Lions Eat Men Suspected of Poaching Rhinos

2962. What If the Climate Models Are Understating the Crisis?

2963. Rhino Poaching in South Africa

2964. The Robbery of Nature

2965. Book Review: The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World

2966. Orcas of the Pacific Northwest Are Starving and Disappearing

2967. Can Crows Make Mental Pictures of Tools?

2968. The Frame-Up of Kevin Cooper

2969. Doctors Recommend Walking in the Woods

2970. Marxism and Human Nature

2971. Eight Critically Endangered Black Rhinos Die in Kenya

2972. In India, Summer Heat Could Soon Be Unbearable. Literally.

2973. The "Sunk Cost Fallacy" Not Limited To People

2974. An Attempt at a Census to Control Cat Population in Washington D.C

2975. Cuban Legislature Approves New Constitution

2976. Poetry: The Bear

2977. The Last of the Ocean Wilderness

2978. Madness in the Iranian Socialist Movement

2979. Geoengineering and Capitalism’s Creative Destruction of the Earth

2980. Deepening our Understanding of Social Reproduction Theory

2981. Natural Geo-Engineering as Solution to the Planetary Crisis

2982. Poisons Used in Agriculture and Pest Control Cause Wildlife Death

2983. A Pregnant Dolphin. A Fatal Gunshot. A Disturbing Trend.

2984. Israel Doesn’t Want to Be My State

2985. The origins of Women’s Oppression – a Defence of Engels and a New Departure

2986. Toxic Algae Overtakes Florida Beaches and Waterways

2987. A Revolution Within the Revolution: Cuba Opens to Same-Sex Marriages

2988. Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature”

2989. Marx on Migration

2990. Andrzej Wajda survey

2991. Nicaragua: Dynamics of an Interrupted Revolution

2992. Interview: Richard Powers: 'We're completely alienated from everything else alive'

2993. Fredric Jameson and Film Theory

2994. The Oldest Profession

2995. Germany's Kleingarten

2996. Free California of Fossil Fuels

2997. Marx, Value, and Nature

2998. A Massacre, Not a Coup: A Response to Misinformation on Nicaragua

2999. On Dependency School and Monopoly Capitalism Theory

FAIR USE NOTICE

This web log (blog) contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, social, economic, foreign policy, human rights, scientific, cultural, educational, health and legal issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . All the materials contained in these pages are properly attributed. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you have to contact the copyright owner.