All Posts Tagged as 'Evolution'

The company said its new position was driven by a recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action and other corporations reevaluating their diversity initiatives. Online pressure, legal threats and customer opposition have led many companies, including Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere and others to make changes to their DEI initiatives.

We knew the long quarantine was making us all crabby, but this is extreme: People now feel fully betrayed by the long history of crabification (technically, “carcinization”) of different species over time. That means groups of crustaceans have evolved into crabs in five completely different contexts, giving rise to a meme that the long arc of history truly bends toward the crab.

So how does carcinization happen? Well, that part is pretty simple. Animals that live in similar habitats face obstacles that can shuttle them all toward the same evolutionary advantages. Britannica cites the marsupials as a key example, where despite having one critical difference from their “placental” counterparts in other parts of the world, the marsupials often correspond very closely to these other animals.

Animals can evolve separately but end up evolving toward other species, too, or even spontaneously evolve the same characteristics in totally separate groups. Birds and bats can both fly using mechanical wings. Birds and mammals are both warmblooded, but both evolved from groups that were not.

"The inspection staff is trying to ensure the animals in a shelter facility are receiving humane care. Humane care is defined as the provision of adequate heat, ventilation, sanitary shelter and adequate food and water, consistent with the normal requirements and feeding habits of the animals, size, species and breed," the department's website states regarding these inspections.

DOES YOUR DOG BARK A LOT? Or is he one of those quiet pooches who barks only when things get really exciting? Most dogs bark at least a little.

Dog barks are not words. But although your dog will never tell you about his parents or the weather or the amazing bone he had yesterday, his barks still communicate important information.

Your dog’s barks may not be words, but he probably barks a little differently depending on what kind of thing has got him excited. If you listen closely, you may find you can tell the difference between a bark directed toward a package deliverer and one directed toward a friend at the door. The bark to a passing dog may be different than the bark at a passing car.

I’m a 36-year-old single straight woman, and I really didn’t think this was going to be an issue until later in life. I’m a very sexual person (just reading about sex in your column is enough to turn me on) and I’d like to get married one day, but for the past few years, I haven’t even been able to manage halfway decent sex, much less great sex or a relationship. The problem I keep experiencing in the dating world is the same: men with all kinds of erection issues.

The most recent guy could get hard but would lose it after a few thrusts, saying sex doesn’t do it for him these days (he preferred mutual masturbation or blow jobs). Guy No. 2 was good in bed but refused any touching outside of that 20 minutes. Guy No. 3 required 20 minutes of me going down on his flaccid penis before possibly getting hard enough to have intercourse for three minutes (most of the time, he wouldn’t get hard at all). Guy No. 4 hadn’t had sex in years so he’d either come in 30 seconds or he’d stick it in and barely move so he could last five minutes (I could have worked with him sexually, but we broke up for other reasons). Guy No. 5 completely ignored his problem, continuing to thrust even after I told him he was soft (I suspect he had a porn addiction).

The list goes on. I’ve barely had any good sex in the past six years. I don’t know what to do. These guys are all my age or younger. I try to be patient and understanding, asking if there’s something they’d like me to do or offering up a menu of things they might like, but most just shrug awkwardly and avoid talking about it. None of them sound like they’ve made any effort to get help. I get that it can be embarrassing and men might feel ashamed, but these guys keep cropping up in my dating pool. I can orgasm on my own, but I crave and miss sex, and I know I wouldn’t be happy in a relationship without it. So I’m stuck in a lonely, sexually frustrated land and I can’t get out. Any suggestions?

—Elusive Wood

New results gathered from observations of galaxy clusters with Hubble and the Very Large Telescope have shown that the Universe — and this is a consistently irritating property of it — isn't performing as our physics thinks it should.

In this case the focus is on dark matter. When you look at all the matter in the Universe, what we think of as "normal" matter — stuff made up of electrons, neutrons, protons, and so on — is in the distinct minority. Only about one-sixth of all matter is normal; the rest is dark matter.

The reality is that masculinity is changing. As it often has. Men have routinely adapted to the culture and times around them. American manhood has been idealized – or feared – in a variety of ways over the last half century. Here’s a short list:

The Organization Man of the 1950s, who followed the rules and helped build the grand structures we now know as corporations.

His children, the “delinquents,” the scourge of the 50s and early 60s. They chafed under his rules and were epitomized in West Side Story (especially the Jets) and the career of James Dean.

The Sensitive New Age Guy of the 1970s, who explored his feelings, his sexuality, and pretty much anything else he could think of.

The macho guys of the 1980s, epitomized by a new generation of action films starring guys named Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Reagan’s bluster and one-day wars also fit the bill.

The 1990s saw another set of rebels, this time via the Grunge movement. They certainly didn’t look clean and their drugs were a lot harder.

There’s no particular rhyme or reason as to why these particular images of masculinity made it to the top of the heap, nor is there any meaningful way to draw a straight evolutionary line through all of them. The Organization Man doesn’t logically precede or contribute to the macho guys, while the delinquents and the grunge-rs don’t seem terribly different from each other.