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nice DATD!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> poooooooor sharkie!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

Owch, i hope the rocks ok <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

poor teeth <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puppyeyes.gif" alt="" />
i hope someone will collect them, and put them somewhere on an island <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
mentally ill island maybee? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Y - the Descent of Men by Steve Jones
[color:"yellow"]and another XY-Book, for men walking the extinction Rift <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> - humbly presented by a laughing librarian - bye bye guys, science is against you <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> [/color]


Amazon.co.uk
In Y: The Descent of Men, the remarkable implications of an accident of biological evolution are brought to life by the award-winning science writer and British academic geneticist Steve Jones. Not to be confused with clothing sizes or brand names, the capital letters XX and XY refer to the approximate shapes of the sex determining chromosomes. Men have the smaller Y chromosome and confer gender differences on children through their sperm, a distinction that was only discovered in 1902. It was not so very long ago, as Jones reminds us, that scientists (male of course) thought that sperm carried a miniature human (homunculus) and a wife was "a mere seedbed; a step below (a husband) in society, in the household and, most of all, in herself".

Since Darwin's day, humans have been displaced from their place just below the angels in the grand scheme of life. And now to further our ignominy and descent, within the human genome, the male Y chromosome is, as Jones puts it, "the most decayed, redundant and parasitic of the lot". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> Furthermore, man himself may become redundant, for his sperm can be grown in animal testes, and in mice at least an egg can be fertilised with a body cell from another female.

Steve Jones is a brilliant science writer, capable of teasing, cajoling, entertaining and educating the reader without pain. Jones has not only pinched Darwin's title The Descent of Man but learned his technique of persuasion in which the potential critic is disarmed by having the faults, problems and dirt on the subject brought out into the open and given a good public washing. So with men and masculinity, as Jones details with telling detail and great humour, our biological inheritance and its social implications have left an immense wake of problems which will need to be sorted if men and humanity are to get over the crisis of modern manhood.

So come on now chaps, pull yourselves together, dump the techie toys and mags and check out why your organ is so dangerous and what to do about the problem. For a first step, give yourself a treat, read this book and allow yourselves to be entertained and informed, if not necessarily reassured. --Douglas Palmer.

From Publishers Weekly
Shriveled, decrepit and of little use except for sex, the Y chromosome is an apt metaphor for post-modern manhood in this eye-opening exploration of the biology of maleness. Jones, a geneticist and author of Darwin's Ghost, traces the development of maleness from its origins as a parasitic stratagem by which certain microbes forced others to replicate their genes for them, to the dawning age of cloning, which could, in theory, allow women to dispense with men's reproductive services altogether. Along the way he investigates the essentials of maleness, including baldness, the perverse, multi-faceted and never-ending competition for the favor of choosy females, and the many surgical, chemical and mechanical reinforcements men call on to stand firm in battle. Writing in a snappy, erudite style replete with droll euphemisms, Jones takes readers on an engaging tour of the Darwinian view of sex as the ultimately absurd outcome of natural selection and clashing reproductive strategies. But he is no essentialist defender of patriarchy. Indeed, in his treatment males emerge as the weaker sex-a complex and fragile variation on the sturdy female model, whose extra testosterone makes them shorter-lived, more prone to disease and suicide, less able than females to cope in contemporary society and doomed to descent in the coming "age of women." Men may find this book demoralizing, and Jones's case overstated, but women may take a certain grim satisfaction from it-and readers of both sexes will find it very educational.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
British science writer Jones declares that it's men, not women, who are the weaker sex. Even within their embryonic development, much can go awry. If they manage to emerge from gestation anatomically correct, boys must hope they don't carry one of the many genetic diseases that congregate on the Y chromosome. Men's grievances against evolution don't stop there, but Jones expounds on bad news in paradoxically jaunty fashion. This style allows him to elucidate the complexities of genetics in readable, clarifying prose and confirms that Jones is as fine an expositor here as he was in his previous book on evolution, Darwin's Ghost (2000). Jones' sardonic wit enlivens the molecular foundations of maleness, explaining hormones, baldness, sperm count, and even lineages of bastardy in language that is both educational and entertaining. Great general-interest science material. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kurzbeschreibung
n objective study of maleness that, in the light of Dolly the Sheep - who was concieved without male assistance, discusses man's current postition of potential redundance in society. Taking a scientific stance Jones looks at the genetics and biology of what it means to be a male and how he differs from the rest of the species. --


Synopsis
Men, towards the end of the last millennium, felt a sudden tightening of the bowels with the news that the services of their sex had at last been dispensed with. Dolly the Sheep - conceived without male assistance - had arrived. Her birth reminded at least half the population of how precarious man's position may be. What is the point of being a man? For a brief and essential instant he is a donor of DNA; but outside that glorious moment his role is hard to understand. This book is about science not society; about maleness not manhood. The condition is, in the end, a matter of biology, whatever limits that science may have in explaining the human condition. Today's advances in medicine and in genetics mean at last we understand why men exist and why they are so frequent. We understand from hormones to hydraulics how man's machinery works, why he dies so young and how his brain differs from that of the rest of mankind.

I know the many males out there are gonna think on those things,Kiya!

but if men die, women will eventually die too.

It is amazing how ignorance of the works of nature produces such strings of characters.
It just adds to the litter not the literature of libraries.
Anyone initiated in the science of biology knows that nature started out by monogamy but that trait restricted variation and evolution for so many years. Only when nature randomly went into heterogametic breeding that evolution was accelerated.

It is common knowledge that monogamy is one of the reasons of genetic recession.
All the upper and dominant species are heterogametic in nature.
Superior entomological evolution has even more than just male female categorization by specifying soldiers and workers as non reproductive genders but rather productive genders.

Therefore, such ignorant publications are secretly social in their true nature, hostile and misleading.
All ants have equal rights of shelter and food and each bee knows its social place.
Humans demonstrate inferior biological evolution in comparison to such magnificent insects and the proof is what we may call the lesbian dreams. Humans do confuse their social roles and each individual is ambitious to climb the social ladder during a life time rather than focus on being related to one or another social rank.
The problem is in the fact that all healthy and normal humans are sexually reproductive (queens and drones); this causes the feeling of equality to explode. Most of humans can build muscles for a worker role and many humans may study very hard for intellectual roles, but gender traits are intrinsic.
With the genetic knowledge advances, if humans could reproduce by cloning while controlling the genetic features, then there would be neither males nor females because without male reproductive organs there would be no use for female reproductive organs too. It is simply one step further to create artificial wombs and get rid of mammary gland needs just like insects do and better. If this concept of cloning was augmented by genetic manipulation, then the future of the human race is doomed to extinction with the evolution of a new race that has no specific gender in the sense of sexuality but rather in the sense of social roles.
Reproduction in-vitro would not only mean bye-bye guys but also bye-bye gals. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" />

No, Lews, this is not the 1st book on this topic - in fact it's just an old genetic theory from the 80es now moderated through in-vitro-fertilisation and genetic development. Interesting point is this IMO: 2 British genetic specialists wrote their books within a very short time: Jones and Bryan Sykes. And both say nearly the same <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" /> (colleagues?)

I even recall an old book from the beginning of the 80es dealing with this - was a German though.

I didn't write these books, but I'm buying them for my library - have already got quite a few interested members - females of course <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />
Kiya, in charge of medicine

And I thought this topic quite suitable for the Riftrunner lair: Men walking the rift <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

ha. that would be strange, no men, wait. I'd be dead too!


ah. well, sounds like a strange book, I won't borrow it from the library.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />

@ Dad ...
I may be told to get my mind out of the gutter here...and that is not the way i am intending it...
But....ummmm....there are certain pleasures that both sexes enjoy - and not neccessairly together, or with the opposite sex.
So, if all of our reproductive organs disappeared...well...that would be the end of that wouldn't it. It would be too bad...to deney ourselves that.

I would hate things to end up like that movie with Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock. Brutal!

BUT - we are talking thousands of years...it won't matter to uis anymore! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" />

Hi Carrie,
I understand you completely and “tend” to agree too. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
However, please allow me to explain the evolutionary function of pleasure in a most scientific way (no gutters).
Firstly, it would be interesting to know that orgasmic pleasure is in fact a mild sensation of pain associated with muscular tissue spasm. It is the brain that was instinctively encoded to translate that specific form of pain as pleasure. Not all species feel pleasure at all, on the contrary, many would feel mere pain but it begins before copulation and it is copulation that would relief the species from that stress and pain. Nature has many ways to ensure survival, but pleasure has a rather extended function.
Human neonates are extremely vulnerable and demand parental care for quite a longer time than most other species. Complete independence of our species’ individuals takes about 20 years and evolution has included the safeguards to ensure parental caring for such a long time. You may wish to read “The Naked Ape” by Desmond Morris”. The function of pleasure is to ensure that the father and the mother are being rewarded for staying together and caring for the offspring.

With genetic revolutionary practices and in-vitro cloning humans may become a genderless species and lose the pleasure and the pain altogether. Not a big deal.

I find the ultimate pleasure in reading books, listening to music and playing with cats. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
I also find great pleasure in supporting my friends and I refrain from telling you about the pleasure I get from what I would do to my enemies. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Finally, I wish to keep your hope and not take it away, because although severe pleasure is also pain, there is the pleasure of tasting good food and smelling nice perfumes and touching soft skin. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
Senses may enjoy softer pleasures and more sophisticated excitement.
How can I forget the visual pleasure of admiring fabulous paintings or playing a fabulous game such as <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" />

________
........____........

I have watched Desmin Morris's series on this on TLC i beleive. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I do love it, very intresting...

And, yes, there are definetly more important things than this pain...reading books <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> But, humans will be human, and we have been doing this for thousands of years! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Maybe not for the pain/pleasure to begin with...but our society now thinks that it is for the sex not the children...i am not explaining properly <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> but, there is definetly more emmfisis on it...

And, another part of biological intresting fact...

There is a mecanism in a females brain that actually makes her forget how bad labour actually was. Yes, she remebers it was bad, but, if she was able to remeber how bad it was 1) she would have no more children.... and 2) she would go into SHOCK after labour!!!!!!!! The human body is amazing! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Women live longer when they are well fed and well laboured. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
But it seems that some women are well fed up with labour. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
However, I have seen some women to be rather proud of their labour as if it was winning a championship, and the amazing thing is that I believe them and agree with them. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
The secret is in the maternal feelings and the hormone cycles that give women ultimate satisfaction.
Mothers hold an honourable title, at least until we see more clones born without having mothers to carry or to feed or to nurse. I am not saying that every woman must be a mother or should be a mother but that every woman has a mother.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

I remember reading somewhere that DNA ancestry is traced back through the female and not the male. Is this true? Does anyone know? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" /> If this is true then that truly would make the female chromosone dominant, and the male insignificant. (donor only sort of thing)

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

You only wish. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

You need to read on gametogenesis to begin to understand how DNA is inherited from parents.
Each zygote is generated through biological fusion between two halves; one comes from the mother and the other half from the father. I never heard of such a notion as “DNA ancestry” and it is mumbling jumbles at best.
The genetic chromosomes undergo what is called crossover at some stage, which serves the diversity of features. To trace-back such material to ancestral donors is to enlist all the family tree upwards rather than downwards. This is done by writing the name of the father and the mother of every father and every mother you write the name of ad infinitum.

Of course that jumble mumbling you mentioned does have a source and it is called the maternal effect and it has nothing to do with DNA heredity.
The function of DNA is to regulate the synthesis of many proteins some of which are hormones, and if the genetic code of a zygote was recessive, the mother could (in some cases) provide the hormone such that the features are as if there was no genetic deficiency. Naturally they are mothers who lay eggs or get pregnant and they make the first environment for the offspring. No doubt those mothers do have the first and strongest impact on the new generation.
Saying that female’s have chromosomes that are absolutely dominant is a joke that I after your permission shall send to my colleagues. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

Dominance and recession is a big genetic subject that has no preferences of gender. So please be corrected.
Kindest regards.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

Mslynx, this is a theory by Bryan Sykes, British genetic specialist. "Seven daughters of Eve" - I'm still waiting for the German translation.
Kiya

Actually, I think Mslynx is referring to Mitochondrial DNA.




Tracing mother Eve using mitochondrial DNA

Ah! Now that would change the whole subject, because whenever gender is the issue, then that DNA must be nuclear rather than mitochondrial.
Anyhow, the hypothesis of an African mitochondrial Eve is extremely controversial, academically speaking.
Firstly it does not mean that reproduction can carry on without males for the human species. While cloning can be from either gender equally successful. In other words, what was brought up till now does not prove the ladies point that males are on the verge of extinction. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />


Secondly, to make it short, AME is only a hypothesis that is strongly being opposed academically and it found its way to our textbooks but the ancestral trees prove nothing because the best models could be as good without any African origin exclusively, which tears the hypothesis to shreds.
A single ultimate original female may not have mixed continental mitochondrial DNA, but the best phylogenetic trees contradict with the hypothesis. Archaeologists are already pulling their hair and opposing biochemists as renegades because the oldest human due to the new hypothesis is Eve who lived in Africa 142,500 – 285,000 years ago, while archaeologists insist that mankind may be dated as back as 1,000,000 years.

Yes, I am a biochemist but I do not follow like a lemming and I have my own technical points against the hypothesis but this forum is not the right place for publishing them.

Change the whole subject? There's a subject here?? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />

The second article goes on to point out the shortcomings of the original study which implied Africa was the source for mankind (low sample size, not all races were included) and discuss the controversy a bit.

Don't sweat it Dad! Laugh all you want! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> I was not speaking from a lifetime of study on the subject by any means. I do find it all very interesting though.
I think in reality we would all like to know exactly where we come from, because life is so diverse. Are we heaven sent? And if we are; where did the other tribes come from? (christian biblical) Or did we evolve from ameba? If the latter is the case, why hasn't our DNA changed since then? If it has then, perhaps natural selection is taking over and the female chromasone is becomming more dominant. Why have apes not evolved into man yet? And why have we not devolved into cats, because we know they are the master race anyway! LOL! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/kitty.gif" alt="" /> Here kitty, kitty! I stand corrected! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> I think....