The Evolution of Nora

The evolution of specific genetic and environmental counseling in congenital heart diseases.

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Species that appear to be more distantly related have greater differences in DNA than the species that appear to be more closely related.

Political, Social and Economic Evolution

The forelimbs of a human, cow, whale, and bat are different in details but very similar in overall structure and placement. This points to the evidence of a common ancestor species that evolved into different branches creating multiple species. Creationism is not science though, it is based on beliefs outside of nature. But science is only based on naturally occurring phenomena. Many arguments against evolution can be proved wrong: Creationists argue that evolution is faulty because of the gaps in the fossil record, but scientists have found are a still finding intermediate species to fill those gaps.

Scientists have found that certain flagella have certain functions an can be developed through evolution. Some creationists argue that earth is too young to develop these species, but earth has been discovered to be 4.

Teaching creationism along with evolution will just confuse children. Many scientists who study evolution believe in religion and many religious people believe in evolution. Science and religion should be taught separately. Because of the similarities in bone structure in completely separate species points to a common ancestor.

Because fossils in rock layers show a distinct development over time with intermediate species. This is a mistake that should be untangled. For that reason this piece is a short exploration in to the way in which assholes coexist within frames that are larger than their own sphincters, even though they may not realize it. This is a moment perhaps to look at an ecology of assholes. It is all very well to say we are all interconnected, but what about the implication of being interconnected to all the assholes?

And what does that say about the non-assholes?

Are we all in the oneness? First as Webster says ecologies are found in:. Is the asshole really an isolated island of their own dickwadery? Or is their relational interaction taking place within the larger context of communication that the asshole is responding to?

Is the asshole-ness within them? Or is it in their relationship with either you or the world. Interacting with someone who is prone to: Self-reflection is not a quality of an asshole so I am ok.

Or maybe it takes one to know one? In that sense the asshole is indeed an individual with their own cluster of personal choices that have resulted in their being a douchebag. Part one of the paradox is that in this way, the assessment is correct.

The way that person makes sense of their world is uniquely their own. Their family, their culture their job, their friends and acquaintances their sleep habits, their micro biome, their …holistically speaking all of those things come together to form the filters through which that person experiences the world are uniquely theirs and no one will ever be exactly the same as they are. No one will experience the color blue like they do, or see the same meaning in a poem.

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They are their own lens, and no one else has the same one. But how did they get that way? Part two of the paradox is asking if there is any aspect of them that is not influenced by their family, their culture, language, food, etc.? Is there a definable part of them that is outside of the great interconnectedness? In this sense they are a combining of all that they embody. Ask, what learning took place in their world that contributed to their assholing?

Is it really a choice to be an asshole? I am not suggesting solving this paradox. Living within the interconnectedness of assholes is not something we can opt out of. To be an asshole is both a choice and it is not. Even as non-assholes or so we might hope we are all caught in a web of deplorables, and in that sense, we are part of the systemic ass-hating of our world.

The next ecological characteristic is interdependency. Ecologies are relational and interdependent contexts. There is nothing outside of the processes that are continually forming and informing the ecology. Assholes are not stand-alone entities. So, maybe the nice people are really the assholes because they go around pointing out assholes to make themselves look good? Or is the asshole identifiable as the one who is constantly pulling things out of context and dissing them? Within this dreaded reflection I see it is me then that does not ask about the ecology we share.

It is me that cut the picture and cleaved the context. The real problem with assholes is that humiliation, disrespect and decontextualized judgmental arrogance contaminate the ecology of our communities. The overtones of life in general can go sour when vile exploitative attitudes abound. Assholes underestimate the profound awe of each remarkable living being. In doing so they escalate trouble untold. Fair enough, you may say, life is a bitch… but just keep in mind that it takes a great deal of collective tenderness to heal ecologies, asshole.

In this era of multiple crises and global threats, I am increasingly uneasy with the call for leadership. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rachel Carson, and other iconic figures are held up as examples of true leaders: The lack of such characters now, we are told, suggests a vacuum in our capacity to generate the old-school kind of hope for the future that these courageous individuals embodied. So where are the leaders of today? I would like a moment to call bullshit. This thinking about leadership is not useful.

There is no such thing as an isolated individual—we are all interdependent. Our evolution is only in our mutual contribution and learning. Leadership is an evolving process and, as such, our understanding of what leadership is must evolve in accordance. In the past the world understood leadership as the great deeds of heroes; now we are in another phase of global transition that requires an understanding of leadership based on our understanding of interdependency. Perhaps, instead, leadership is a product of the context, combined with other influences that seem to culminate in crowning an individual with leadership duties.

When we look through the lens of interdependency, it is impossible to separate individuals from their contexts of influence and experience. In ecological terms we can attribute the health and vitality of the whale to the ocean not only to the whale, and we can attribute the strength of the lion to the jungle or savannah not only to the lion. The environment in which the alchemy of collective need is met with a corresponding alchemical combination of possibility produces new paths to follow.

In the combination of community and individual, hardship and support, isolation and belonging, past and future, vision and discipline, there can arise a perfect storm that produces what we have, in the past, called leaders.

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It reeks of colonialism and lopsided history-book listings of individuals successful in taking, making, and claiming. Celebrating the potency of the individual is an insatiable ghost haunting the endless array of courses and manuals for developing leaders.

Our fatal flaw may be the idea that an individual or institution can single-handedly penetrate new frontiers of possibility. This is an obsolete but undead dream of heroes and rescuers pioneering innovations. Lightning bolts of imagination and strength, these so-called leaders are presented as utterly independent of their histories; as though they had fallen from the sky. The haunting seeps into what we call ambition, fueled by our wanting to be important and successful.

There are scissors somewhere that slice the ambitious from their comprehension of the mutuality we all inevitably live within. The mutuality is where the imagination is brewing, where the strength is made, where the integrity of the context lies. Can we extract a stand-out entity from that mutuality and call it a break-away?

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Should we not point to those mutualities as heroic? I am sick of heroes. I look back at how we got where we are now and I wonder what kind of systemic imbalances have been created by the thinking that longs to canonize leaders. What is a leader in a complex system anyway? What is the ecology of leadership? When we look to nature for models, we find that there is not an ecology that would accommodate the existing model of leadership. Think of trees in a forest.

Were they extra courageous or charismatic? The ecological response would observe that the other organisms mutually contributed to that growth. The human construct of leadership is projected onto the pack by us who are in the habit of identifying that pattern. Dogs have no such framing. In fact, I think our notions of leadership are toxic to the ecology of communication and collaboration in a social system. How can there be real communication when there is deference to a leader?

This imbalance creates a hold-back of contribution and interaction. Look now at the fascination with celebrity that has infected the globe. The imbalance in the possibility for communication when one individual is placed above others in this way effectively destroys the possibility of true cooperation and mutual learning. Mutual learning is only possible when all participants are willing to be wrong… willing to learn, to explore new ideas, to go off the map, out of the known, and together grope in the shadowy corners of new ideas, new plans, new territories.

That cannot happen if one person is the know-it-all. Being part of a system requires knowing that whatever happens is an expression of the patterns that entire system is involved in—that means, there is no fault, and everyone is responsible. Everyone must contribute to the shift.

The health and the toxicity of the system ecologically manifests in keeping with the trends of the system. Someone with a diet of sugar, alcohol, pesticides and other harmful substances may develop pimples, rashes, tumors, or other illnesses. In the same way the toxicity of our institutional infrastructure is an indicator of the challenges in our cultural zeitgeist.

The tumor or pimple is formed from within the body as a whole, in the same way that the healing of a wound, or embryonic development of a baby is also formed from within the system as a whole, including the father.

These forms are not stand-alone. This means big oil is not to blame, big banks are not to blame, big pharma is not to blame. Great science, cutting-edge ideas, going from a computer prediction to a tangible disease-beating ingredient that we make in our laboratory which has a very specific health benefit. What research projects are you working on at the moment? Developing peptides with very specific targets in the human body. In other words, we are identifying food peptides that would have an effect on particular receptors within the body, which in turn will have positive downstream effects on our health.

What do you enjoy doing in your leisure time when you are not making ground-breaking scientific discoveries? Drawing, painting, rollerblading, dancing and swimming a little too cold in Ireland though! What advice would you give to science students considering a career in research? If you like a monotonous job then science is not for you. However, if you are committed and good at what you do it's a great ride.

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