Daily Archives: June 7, 2017

Evolution

Official Evolution logo

Evolution was a villainous professional wrestling stable in WWE which was a part of WWE's Raw brand between 2003 and 2005.

At the height of its original existence, the group consisted of Triple H, Ric Flair, Batista and Randy Orton. Evolution slowly began dissolving in 2004 and lost their respective titles (Intercontinental Championship, World Heavyweight Championship and World Tag Team Championship) against Orton, Batista and Booker T/Rob Van Dam then Chris Benoit and Edge. Evolution turned on Orton the night following SummerSlam, when he won the World Heavyweight Championship and kicked him out of the group.[1][2] After winning the Royal Rumble in 2005 and teasing that he would chase the WWE Championship, Batista turned on Triple H and decided to pursue the World Heavyweight Championship himself. Although Batista's departure was largely the end for the group, the final break up came when Triple H turned on and attacked Flair.

Evolution later reformed on April 14, 2014 after Batista joined forces with Triple H and Orton. Flair did not participate in the reunion, as he had retired from full participation in wrestling in 2012.[3]

Each member of Evolution represented the best in: "the past" (Ric Flair), "the present" (Triple H), and "the future" (Randy Orton and Batista) of professional wrestling.[1][4] Triple H would reveal on his 2013 Triple H - Thy Kingdom Come DVD that Mark Jindrak was originally planned to be in the group in Batista's role as the Arn Anderson-like enforcer, with Jindrak even shooting vignettes with the rest of the group, before it was decided to make Batista part of the group instead.[5]

Flair's character trademarks of coming out in suits and being a noted Playboy, along with his and Triple H's trademark heel ruthlessness, were traits that carried over into the entire stable, both during and for a couple of years after Evolution.

At Unforgiven in 2002, Triple H defended the World Heavyweight Championship against Rob Van Dam. During the match Ric Flair came down to the ring and grabbed the sledgehammer from Triple H and teased hitting him before hitting Van Dam, allowing Triple H to get the win.[6] From that point on, Flair accompanied Triple H to the ring as his manager. Shortly after, Batista moved from SmackDown! to Raw and Flair also began accompanying him to the ring while continuing to second Triple H. On January 20, 2003, Randy Orton joined Triple H, Flair, and Batista in attacking Scott Steiner to complete the group.[7] Two weeks later the group got its name when Triple H, after the group jumped Tommy Dreamer, spoke about how the four men were examples of pro wrestling's evolution from the past (Flair) to the present (himself) to the future (Batista and Orton). On the May 26 episode of Raw, Orton attacked both Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash after a 2-on-1 handicap match with Michaels and Flair (who eventually turned on Michaels during the match) taking on Triple H.[1][8] Batista was out for nearly eight months, because he retore his triceps while rehabilitating the injury.

In 2003, at Bad Blood, Flair was able to defeat Shawn Michaels after Orton struck Michaels with a chair. Later that night, Triple H retained his World Heavyweight Championship in a Hell in a Cell match against Kevin Nash.[1][9] At Unforgiven, Orton (who began developing a "Legend Killer" gimmick) defeated Michaels to prove that he was indeed a Legend Killer.[10] Later that night, Triple H defended the World Heavyweight Championship against Goldberg, to whom he lost the title.[11] On the September 29 episode of Raw, Triple H issued a $100,000 bounty to anybody who could take out Goldberg.[1][12] Three weeks later, Batista made his return during a match between Goldberg and Michaels and attacked the champion, finishing by stomping on a steel chair with Goldberg's ankle sandwiched in it to claim the bounty.[1][13] At Survivor Series, Orton participated in a Team Bischoff versus Team Austin elimination tag team match in which Orton was the sole survivor.[14] Later that night, Goldberg faced Triple H in a rematch from Unforgiven for the World Heavyweight Championship which Goldberg won despite repeated interference from Flair, Orton, and Batista.[15] At the height of Evolution's power, the group controlled all of the male-based championships of Raw after Armageddon. Batista teamed with Flair to win the World Tag Team Championship from the Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley) in a Tag Team Turmoil match,[16] Orton captured the Intercontinental Championship from Rob Van Dam,[17][18] and Triple H regained the World Heavyweight Championship from Goldberg (in a Triple Threat match that also involved Kane), with the help of the other members.[1][19][20] In June 2003, Evolution decided to try and recruit Kane. After unsuccessful attempts, Triple H would face Kane in a match with a Title vs. Mask stipulation. After defeating Kane he would finally be unmasked completely for the audience to see.[21]

In January 2004 at the Royal Rumble, Flair and Batista successfully defended the World Tag Team Championship against the Dudley Boyz in a Tables match, and World Heavyweight Champion Triple H fought Shawn Michaels to no contest in a Last Man Standing match, thus retaining the championship.[22] Flair and Batista exchanged the World Tag Team Championships with Booker T and Rob Van Dam.[23][24][25] At WrestleMania XX, Evolution defeated the Rock 'n' Sock Connection (The Rock and Mick Foley) in a 3-on-2 handicap match.[1][26] Later that night, Triple H lost the World Heavyweight Championship to Chris Benoit (in a triple threat match that also involved Shawn Michaels) when he tapped out to the Crippler Crossface.[1][27] At Backlash, Flair lost to Shelton Benjamin in one-on-one action.[28] Later that night, Orton defended the Intercontinental Championship successfully against Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) in a Hardcore match, while Chris Benoit retained the World Heavyweight Championship in a triple threat match against Triple H and Shawn Michaels, this time forcing Michaels to submit with the Sharpshooter.[29] Triple H and Shawn Michaels would later continue their feud at Bad Blood inside a Hell in a Cell, which was won by Triple H and thus ending their feud.

While still World Champion, Benoit teamed with Edge to take the World Tag Team Championship from Flair and Batista.[30] In mid-2004, Eugene befriended Triple H. At Vengeance, it was revealed that Triple H used him. The angle concluded after Eugene accidentally caused Triple H's loss to Chris Benoit at Vengeance.[31] On the same night, Edge defeated Randy Orton to end his seven-month-long Intercontinental Championship reign.[32]

Triple H received one final shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, on the July 26, 2004 episode of Raw in an Iron Man match. Earlier that night, Orton won a number-one contender battle royal for the World Heavyweight Championship so a title match between Triple H and Orton could have taken place at SummerSlam. However, Eugene interfered in the Iron Man match and helped Benoit take the lead and retain the title in the final seconds. As a result, the main event of SummerSlam was a title match between Benoit and Orton.[33] At SummerSlam, Orton pinned Benoit to become the new World Heavyweight Champion and the youngest World Champion in WWE history to date.[34][35] On the August 16, 2004 episode of Raw, Orton was kicked out of Evolution following a successful defense of the title against Chris Benoit.[1][36] Batista hoisted Orton on to his shoulders in what appeared to be a celebration, but following the thumbs down from Triple H, the group proceeded to attack Orton.[36]

At Unforgiven, Triple H beat Orton to regain the World Heavyweight Championship, with help from Flair, Batista, and Jonathan Coachman.[37][38] Orton's feud with Evolution continued until Survivor Series where Triple H, Batista, Gene Snitsky, and Edge were defeated by Orton, Maven, Chris Jericho, and Chris Benoit in a Survivor Series match for control of Raw over the following month.[39]

On the December 6 episode of Raw, the World Heavyweight Championship was vacated when a triple threat match with Triple H, Edge, and Benoit ended in a double pin (Edge tapped out to Benoit's Crippler Crossface while he had Benoit pinned to the ground),[40] and the title was to be decided in an Elimination Chamber match at New Year's Revolution in early 2005.

In the Elimination Chamber match at New Year's Revolution, Batista, Orton, and Triple H were the last three remaining in the match. Orton eliminated Batista with a RKO and Triple H pinned Orton with Batista's help to win the title.[1][41][42] On the following night's Raw, a number-one contender's match saw Orton pin Batista to gain a title shot at the Royal Rumble.[43] Triple H suggested that Batista not enter the Royal Rumble match, wanting the group to focus on Triple H retaining the title. Batista declined, entered the Rumble at number 28 and won.[1][44] As part of the match's storyline, Orton was concussed and then pinned to have Triple H retain the title, finally ending their feud.[1][45]

Triple H tried to persuade Batista to challenge the WWE Champion John "Bradshaw" Layfield and John Cena of SmackDown! rather than for his World Heavyweight Championship. This involved Triple H plotting a feud between JBL and Batista, showing JBL badmouthing Batista in an interview and staging an attack on Batista with a limousine designed to look like Layfield's. The scheme was unsuccessful and at the brand contract signing ceremony, Batista chose to remain on Raw, powerbombing Triple H through a table and thus quitting the faction.[46] Batista defeated Triple H for the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 21,[47] then defended and retained the title in rematches at Backlash,[48] and Vengeance in a Hell in a Cell match. Triple H and Batista made peace backstage afterwards and ended their feud.[49]

After Vengeance, Triple H took time off, Flair turned face before going on to win the Intercontinental Championship, and the group was dissolved. Triple H returned at the "WWE Homecoming" episode of Raw on October 3 where he was to team with Flair in a tag team match against Carlito and Chris Masters. After winning that match, Triple H betrayed Flair and attacked him with a sledgehammer, marking the end of Evolution. During the break up all members face each other at least once.[50]

On December 10, 2007, Evolution had an in-ring reunion as faces on the Raw 15th Anniversary special episode. After Batista, Flair, and Triple H, who turned face himself in summer 2006 when he reunited with Shawn Michaels to reform D-Generation X, made their way to the ring, Orton (who was still a heel) played footage of himself being attacked and kicked out of the group and said that he hadn't forgiven them for turning on him in 2004 and didn't trust them, to which Triple H responded that they found him annoying, so he partnered with Rated RKO member Edge and Umaga. Evolution won the match.

Seven years later, in April 2014, Triple H, Batista, and Randy Orton reformed their alliance after Daniel Bryan defeated all three of them in the same night to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of WrestleMania XXX.[51][52] The night after WrestleMania on Raw, Batista and Orton teamed together to face The Usos for the WWE Tag Team Championships, but the match ended in a no contest due to both teams being counted out.[53] Later that night, Batista and Orton, along with Kane, attacked Bryan before he was set to defend his title against Triple H. Before Triple H could defeat Bryan, The Shield interrupted by spearing him and taking out Orton, Batista, and Kane, causing Bryan to retain his title via disqualification.[54]

On the April 14 episode of Raw, Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista came down to the ring to attack The Shield after their 11-on-3 handicap match, using the name and the theme of Evolution.[3] The Shield defeated Evolution in a six-man tag team match at Extreme Rules.[55] and then The Shield defeated Evolution yet again in a six-man No Holds Barred elimination tag match at Payback with a victory in which none of The Shield were eliminated.[56] On the June 2 Raw, Batista quit the WWE (kayfabe) after his title match request for the night was denied by Triple H due to Daniel Bryan's neck injury at the time and unable to complete. This was done to write Batista off WWE television so he could promote Guardians of the Galaxy, however he never came back to WWE since. Later that night, Triple H declared that he had resorted to "Plan B" in his quest to destroy The Shield, prompting Seth Rollins to attack Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns.[57] Although Triple H and Randy Orton were still together as part of The Authority, all references to Evolution were quietly dropped afterwards, effectively ending Evolution again.

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Evolution (professional wrestling) - Wikipedia

Theres a story that weve been telling about the origin of our species. It goes something like this: Around 200,000 years ago, in East Africa near modern-day Ethiopia the first Homo sapiens diverged from an ancestral species, perhaps Homo erectus. From there, we spread, in a linear manner over millennia north into Europe, and then through the rest of the world.

That story, it turns out, is wrong or at least woefully incomplete. In two papers published in Nature Wednesday, anthropologists say theyve found evidence that the dawn of our species may have actually been much earlier.

Their evidence is remains of human ancestors, dating at around 300,000 years old, that look a lot like Homo sapiens and were found in the Jebel Irhoud cave in Morocco thousands of miles from Ethiopia.

Thats significant because its much older than anything else in Africa we could relate to our species, Jean-Jacques Hublin, the director of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a lead author on one of the papers, said. This represents the very root of our species, the oldest Homo sapiens ever found in Africa or elsewhere.

Or maybe not. Whether these remains truly represent the root of humanity depends on what your definition of what humanity is. And on that question, theres surprising nuance and disagreement.

These specimens pieces of skull, jaw, and assorted other body parts of five individuals are not new to paleoanthropology.

The first pieces of them were discovered in the 1960s by miners clearing a hillside in Morocco. And they were a curiosity. Scientists at the time assumed the fossilized remains along with fragments of their stone tools relatively new, maybe only 40,000 years old.

But something didnt add up: The specimens looked more primitive than what youd find from 40,000 years ago. Their facial structures looked modern, but parts of the skull that surround the brain were smaller in some key areas.

When the authors of the Nature paper got the chance to reanalyze the site in recent years, they gathered fragments of flint that had been exposed to fires made by the occupants.

The dating technique they used is called thermoluminescence. And its pretty cool.

When those early humans put their flint tools into the fire all those millennia ago, the heat released electrons from the rocks crystalline structure. Since, those electrons have been slowly replenished over time from solar radiation. In the modern day, scientists heat up those pieces of flint, and the reaccumulated electrons are released, measured, and can give scientists a date for when they were initially fired. Thats how they got 300,000 years (give or take a few tens of thousands of years).

Hublin says these individuals were not modern humans like us, but a slightly earlier form of Homo sapiens, one with a less developed brain and perhaps other differences in its DNA. And he says these differences between us and them are proof that evolution occurs over a gradient. It also shows the biggest evolutionary change weve undergone in the past 300,000 years is in the size of our brains.

And all this evidence, he says, points to a pan-Africa hypothesis of human development.

The hypothesis: No, we did not just emerge in Eastern Africa. As of 300,000 years ago, our ancestors were already spread around the continent (paleoanthropologists have identified a probable Homo sapiens skull in South Africa dating back 250,000 years).

And they were on the move, and spreading their genes. The idea is that there is no [one] Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is a Garden of Eden, it is Africa, Hublin says.

I ran Hublins paper and conclusions by two other anthropologists Ian Tattersall, the curator emeritus of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History, and John Hawks, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. And while they dont doubt the dating of these findings, they do question whether we can really call these specimens Homo sapiens.

After all, they do have some significant differences with us when it comes to the shape of their brains, which is a defining characteristic of our kind.

I think you have to be fairly rigorous [with] what you admit into Homo sapiens, Tattersall says. There are plenty of people out there who are willing to take a much looser view of what Homo sapiens is, and would be happy to cram this into Homo sapiens as a matter of convenience, or a matter of philosophy even. I wouldnt go along with that.

Hublin is firm in his belief that these are indeed Homo sapiens. Evolution exists, he responds. The reality is that there is a continuous line of evolution between early sapiens like Irhoud and humans of today without any breaking point along this line.

I do think theres a really interesting story here, but we dont quite know what it is

Evolution is not a straight line. Its one that produces many branches (most of which die off). Those branches can also join back together in the future. Those rejoined branches sprout branches. Some of those branch off and recombine. Others die. Its a tangled mess.

The lineages are constantly splitting, dying, and rejoining. Its believed our line split off from our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, around 500,000 years ago. But its not clear when we became human. Evolution doesnt always provide clean cutoffs from one form of a species to the next.

Are these Moroccan specimens truly our ancestors? We cant know. Did they give rise to our ancestors who lived in East Africa? Maybe. Or are they an offshoot of the main line, a group that was on their way to becoming their own distinct species but then died off? Also possible.

As long we have properly identified the actors in the play, were not going to understand the plot, Tattersall says. I do think theres a really interesting story here, but we dont quite know what it is.

At the very least, Tattersall says this evidence pushes back the start date of the middle Stone Age the age when people started to make sharp blades out of stone.

That we dont know how human these people were makes me appreciate the complexities of evolution a bit more.

Hawks says to imagine youre holding your mothers hand, your mother is holding her mothers hand, and the chain continues all the way back 300,000 years. What were talking about is about 10,000 to 15,000 [people] in a row the population of a small town is what connects you to that time frame, he says.

Youre connected to the person at end of the chain, yet they dont look quite like you. Their face is the same, but their skull is a little smaller. Maybe they have a harder time keeping up with the fast pace of your conversation. That person is both like you and something different at the same time.

The fossil record isnt this neat, however. I cant connect the dots yet, Hawks says. There are too few dots. Just too few. We dont have all the links in the chain from our mothers now to our mothers 300,000 years ago.

What is true: Each year, our human story grows more complicated and fascinating. Just in the past decade weve learned, through DNA evidence, that we mated with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and probably several other species of the genus Homo. Weve learned that at one time our world was inhabited by several subspecies of human. And we interacted with them.

Still, theres so much we dont know. And meanwhile, we keep making startling new discoveries: like the short-bodied Homo naledi that lived around 250,000 years ago and could have been in contact with our ancestors. Our experience in Stone Age Africa however it went wasnt simple.

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The story of human evolution in Africa is undergoing a major rewrite - Vox

In a scene in the newest film adaptation of Wonder Woman, the heroine (Gal Gadot), dressed as her alter ego Diana Prince, comes to the aid of a friend by destroying a gunmans weapon. She hurls the bully across the pub, where he lands in a hard crash. Watching the scene, Sameer, an associate of Wonder Womans comrade Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) exclaims, Im both frightened and aroused.

Looking more closely at Wonder Womans 75-year-old history, it becomes clear that the heroine has consistently evoked mixed feelingswhether fear, awe, or attraction. Her body in particular has been a canvas upon which authors, artists, and audiences have negotiated womens shifting gender roles and beauty standards from the 1940s through today. Tracing how Wonder Womans appearance has evolved in the comics and film and TV adaptations reveals the ways her creators tried to respond to anxieties about womens independence; in playing with her proportions, skin color, and costumes, the architects of Wonder Womans image over time have both empowered and objectified her, though the line between the two is often blurry.

When Wonder Woman made her cover debut in January 1942, the superhero was modeled after a new feminine ideal. According to the scholar Jill Lepore, the Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston was inspired by the Varga Girl centerfolds in Esquire magazine for their cosmopolitanism and exoticism. For Marston, it was important that Wonder Woman have a sexy and feminine appearance to counteract what he called the blood-curdling masculinity of comics at the time. As a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for All-American Comics, Marston used his background as a psychologist to advise the newly formed D.C. Comics on how to fight accusations by concerned parents and culture critics about the mediums violent content.

His solution was a female superhero guided by love. The final artwork by Harry G. Peter depicted Wonder Woman with white skin, her hair styled into impeccable 1940s waves. A red and gold corset with a plunging back was paired with star-spangled culottes that accentuated her curves. In a few months, the duo pushed boundaries of propriety and changed Wonder Woman into tighter, shorter shorts. Her strapless bustier began to expose varying degrees of cleavage.

Through the end of World War II, Wonder Womans brazen attire was coupled with plotting that promoted womens social and economic freedom. For example, in Issue #5, the heroine advocates for mothers and wives to join the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACS) and the United States Womens Naval Reserves in order to combat a cruel husbands domination. Via these storylines, Wonder Woman adeptly married the message of womens empowerment spread by war propaganda (for example, Rosie the Riveter) and the look of the pin-up girls adorning mens barracks.

However, after the war, Wonder Womans salacious dress and independence came under scrutiny as gender roles were re-solidified. In the early 50s, shortly after Marstons death, the psychiatrist and author Fredric Wertham argued that comics were inspiring youth delinquency and that Wonder Woman, in particular, was espousing homosexuality. Wonder Womans storylines, which saw the hero frequently bound and punishing her female nemeses with a good spanking, had been accused of lewdness before, but because she was also an important tool in galvanizing a new work force during the war, this material was overlooked.

One notable cover, created a few years before the industry began regulating itself with the Comics Code, hints at changes to come that would give Wonder Woman more marriage-centered stories. In the 1950 Issue #97 of Sensation Comics, Wonder Woman becomes the editor of the Hopeless Hearts Department of a newspaper. The cover shows Wonder Woman (in costume) typing a response to Steves letter submission which reads, Dear Wonder Woman, When will you marry me? Steve is looking over her shoulder expectantly, just shy of looming.

Werthams outspokenness quickly drew a following, pressuring the comics industry to make changes.The Code, adopted in 1954, toned down the increasingly amped-up sexiness of women in comics including Lois Lane, Betty and Veronica of the Archie comics, and Black Cat. The Code prohibited suggestive and salacious illustrations, stressing that all characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society and that women were to be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities. Wonder Womans costume was adjusted to cover more skin. Wertham equated Wonder Womans lesbianism with misandry, and storylines about heterosexual love became more prevalent alongside changes that made her smaller.

In 1968, the editors made Wonder Woman younger and thinner. This 60s rebranding was a crucial turning point in the history of the character. On the cover of her debut issue (#178), she is depicted literally painting over her past by defacing an iconic Wonder Woman poster. In this issue, the heroine gives up her warrior powers and decides to fight crime as Diana Prince, a small-business owner. Her costume was replaced by a series of swingy color-blocked dresses with leggings that could easily be acquired in Dianas groovy fashion boutique and in stores across America.

Though The New Wonder Woman comics introduce Diana as an almost waif-like modern girl, as the issues progress, Diana returns to various states of voluptuousness and undress. This increasing departure from the rebrand maps onto the growing visibility of the womens movement. The feminist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine Gloria Steinem lamented the New Wonder Woman and attempted to resurrect Marstons original vision for the hero by compiling a retrospective of his work. That same year, Wonder Woman graced the cover of Ms. with the headline Wonder Woman for President.

During this time, DC Comics was trying to find a way to respond to the historical significance of the womens and black-power movements. The introduction of Nubia, Wonder Womans black half-sister, was an attempt to introduce diversity into the DC universe and simultaneously create more feminist storylines. The cover of Issue #206 in July 1973 shows Nubia and Wonder Woman facing off, virtually identical except for skin color. In some stories, Wonder Woman was a white savior archetype, helping Nubia liberate African women, yet the artwork played with the shades of their skin, emphasizing their contrast or similarity.

According to Steinem, DCs engagement with feminism and race was in part an effort to appease activists such as herself. The writer Laura Wolff Scanlan quotes Steinem, who remembers the person in charge of Wonder Woman calling me up from DC Comics. He said, Okay. She has her magical powers back, her lasso, her bracelets, she has Paradise Island back, and she has a black African Amazon sister named Nubia. Now will you leave me alone!

Wonder Woman got back her powers in 1973, and by that time, her first television adaptation was already in production. Largely influenced by the Diana Prince era of the comics, the 1974 ABC made-for-television movie cast a blonde actress, Cathy Lee Crosby, in the titular role. The actress most resembled Twiggy, the uber-mod British model who ruled the 1960s. The film premiered to dismal reviews, but executives still believed Wonder Woman was a franchise worth pursuing.

A year later, the Wonder Woman series debuted on ABC, starring Lynda Carter, who was the physical opposite of Crosby. Carter, a Latina actress and former model, had dark hair and an athletic, slim frame. Carters Wonder Woman was compatible with comic-book artwork that played with Wonder Womans racial and ethnic ambiguity and that would reach a height in the 1990s. The series kept Wonder Woman at the forefront of popular culture until it ended in 1979, but the comic book struggled to stay relevant in the following decade.

By 1987, Wonder Womans print comic sales were down, and a revolving door of writers and artists struggled to find a firm identity for the character. DC decided to rewrite Wonder Womans history and start from scratch. The writer and artist George Perez, a staunch feminist, created a new origin story influenced by Greek mythology. Perez also brought on Steinem as a consultant, resulting in plotlines that emphasized socio-cultural issues such as ageism, domestic abuse, and discrimination. Wonder Womans costume was more functional, and the covers rarely showed her in a suggestive pose. Instead, she has an active body, constantly involved in battle. This was aligned with Perezs goal to redress the overly sexual representation of the heroine. However, when Perezs run at the comic ended in 1992, artists and authors were quick to revert to drawing Wonder Woman for a male audience.

During the mid 90s and especially during the tenure of the writer and artist Mike Deodato, comics became what the cartoonist Trina Robbins identifies as not merely a boys club, but a Playboy Club. Wonder Womans body was a spectacle, the physical ideal of the time. She had muscular arms and legs that ranged from gymnast-like to bodybuilder big; she also had a tiny torso, flowing raven hair, and large, round breasts. Her costumes lower half changed to a high-cut, hipbone-exposing thong bottom.

The bad-girl art of Deodato, as it was called, aimed to be provocative and sexual, harkening back to good-girl art of the 40s and 50s in which characters such as Phantom Lady and Invisible Scarlet ONeil were regularly depicted in bikinis or lingerie. This drawing style gained a new resonance in the 90s as the Amazonian supermodel of the 80s gave way to the heroin chic bodies of models like Kate Moss and Jaime King. As discussions about this gaunt body type (and the social transgressions it represented, such as drug abuse and eating disorders) came to the fore, Wonder Womans artists pushed back, appearing to mimic instead the voluptuousness of Playboy icons Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith. Though these women represented a hypersexuality that media outlets were quick to judge, it seems as though their bodies were still easier to understand as a feminine ideal than the rail-thin ones of models.

In the past decade and a half, Wonder Womans artists and writers have aimed to leave behind her sex-symbol image with varying degrees of success. The cartoonist Cliff Chiang, who drew Wonder Woman from 2012 to 2015, spoke to Nerdist about an artists responsibility to change the comics industrys trend toward scantily clad and sexily contorted women: Its not like when Im drawing [that] my hand slips and suddenly its sexy ... These are conscious decisions someone is making, and there are many of them. It doesnt accidentally happen. As creators, its important for us to reign that in. The stakes of Wonder Woman's representation becomes starkly clear when real women don the costume and become subject to the same objectification as the fictional character. A 2011 television reboot starring Adrianne Palicki never made it to air amid criticism based on leaked on-set photos. The first version of the costume consisted of a corset and tight, shiny blue pants and was slammed for being too trashy, too bad porn-y.

In a 2016 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, the actress Gal Gadot addressed initial reactions by some fans that she was not well endowed enough to portray the Amazon princess. Gadot, like the male actors portraying superheroes, underwent extensive training and bulking to look the part, yet slenderness, emphasized by the films much-criticized brand partnership with Think Thin protein bars, remains an essential aspect of the character. By Western standards, being feminine means being slim, taking up less space, and having less physical power. Whether her muscles are larger or smaller, or her body is covered or exposed, Wonder Womans thinness is the only consistent aspect of her look.

For too much of her history, Wonder Womans body has been modified to keep her from being powerful, physically and politically. Yet, for many, Wonder Woman endures as a feminist icon. For others, these contradictory characterizations of Wonder Woman are enough reason to dismiss her outright. However, these conflicting and seemingly incompatible versions of Wonder Woman are arguably what make her an exceptional character. Possibly more so than her male superhero counterparts, Wonder Woman is bound to historyand therefore bound to be ever-changing. But Wonder Woman also has immense powers for change, and her ability to galvanize women should not be underestimated.

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The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman's Look - The Atlantic

June 7, 2017 (A) Switchgrass root hair growth promotion in the presence of the dark septate endophyte (DSE) fungus, cidomelania panicicola. Warm season C4 grasses such as switchgrass rely on their symbiome to persist in stressful environments such as the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, USA.(B) Symbiosis between the water fern Azolla and the cyanobacteriumAnabaena that involves vertical inheritance of the cyanobacterium via the mega-spore apparatus of the water fern. This is a transverse section of the megaspore apparatus that shows themegaspore (m), the floats (f), and the cyanobacteria (c; red region at the top of the megaspore apparatus).(C) Examples of the obligate lichen symbiosis. Top two rows show examples of lichen species present in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The lower row shows light micrographs of different types of algal associations (indicated witharrows, from L to R: Trebouxia, Trentepohlia, Nostoc) in lichen thalli. Credit: (A) Images prepared by E. Walsh, Rutgers University.(B) Image prepared by H. Schneider.(C) Images by E.A. Tripp and J.C. Lendemer.

In 1859, Charles Darwin included a novel tree of life in his trailblazing book on the theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species. Now, scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and their international collaborators want to reshape Darwin's tree.

A new era in science has emerged without a clear path to portraying the impacts of microbes across the tree of life. What's needed is an interdisciplinary approach to classifying life that incorporates the countless species that depend on each other for health and survival, such as the diverse bacteria that coexist with humans, corals, algae and plants, according to the researchers, whose paper is published online today in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

"In our opinion, one should not classify the bacteria or fungi associated with a plant species in separate phylogenetic systems (trees of life) because they're one working unit of evolution," said paper senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, distinguished professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Studies. "The goal is to transform a two-dimensional tree into one that is multi-dimensional and includes biological interactions among species."

A tree of life has branches showing how diverse forms of life, such as bacteria, plants and animals, evolved and are related to each other. Much of the Earth's biodiversity consists of microbes, such as bacteria, viruses and fungi, and they often interact with plants, animals and other hosts in beneficial or harmful ways. Forms of life that are linked physically and evolve together (i.e. are co-dependent) are called symbiomes, the paper says.

The authors propose a new tree of life framework that incorporates symbiomes. It's called SYMPHY, short for symbiome phylogenetics. The idea is to use sophisticated computational methods to paint a much broader, more inclusive picture of the evolution of organisms and ecosystems. Today's tree of life fails to recognize and include symbiomes. Instead, it largely focuses on individual species and lineages, as if they are independent of other branches of the tree of life, the paper says.

The authors believe that an enhanced tree of life will have broad and likely transformative impacts on many areas of science, technology and society. These include new approaches to dealing with environmental issues, such as invasive species, alternative fuels and sustainable agriculture; new ways of designing and engineering machinery and instruments; enlightened understanding of human health problems; and new approaches to drug discovery.

"By connecting organisms to their microbial partners, we can start detecting patterns of which species associate under specific ecological conditions," Bhattacharya said. "For example, if the same microbe is associated with the roots of very different plants that all share the same kind of habitat (nutrient-poor and high in salt, for example), then we have potentially identified a novel lineage that confers salt and stress tolerance and could be used to inoculate crop plants to provide this valuable trait."

In general, any question that would benefit from the knowledge of species associations in symbiomes could be addressed using SYMPHY, he said.

"We'd actually have trees interacting with trees, and that sort of network allows you to show connections across multiple different organisms and then portray the strength of the interactions between species," he said.

The scientists are calling for the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China and other funding agencies to support a working group of diverse researchers who would propose plans to create the new SYMPHY system.

"What we wish to clearly stress is that we are not engaged in Darwin-bashing. We consider Darwin a hero of science," Bhattacharya said. "New technologies have brought radical new insights into the complex world of microbial interactions that require a fresh look at how we classify life forms, beyond classical two-dimensional trees."

"We should also aim to unify systematics (methods of classifying life) research under the SYMPHY umbrella so that departments with different specialties, such as zoology, botany, microbiology and entomology, work together to portray how biotic interactions impact species evolution, ecology and organismal biology in general," he added.

Explore further: Microscopic soil creatures could orchestrate massive tree migrations

More information: Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.05.002

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why not a 3d tree, one dimension being genetic relations and another being spacial relations and the third being time

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Scientists propose a new paradigm that paints a more inclusive picture of the evolution of organisms and ecosystems - Phys.Org

Recently, new school rappers primarily Lil Uzi Vert, Jaden Smith, and Young Thug have been criticized for how they dress. Uzi dresses like hes the missing member of The Clash, while Thugger and Jaden have broken gender barriers time and time again sporting dresses and other accessories, but for some reason people are shocked. Why though?

Since the 70s, hip hop has been changing and expanding its identity as more rappers and artists enter the game with their own unique personalities and swag. From MC Hammerss vibrant parachute pants, to Kris Kross rocking their clothes backwards, to Kanye West sporting a leather skirt, rap has always had fearless artist who arent afraid to push the boundaries of fashion. So, for those concerned about what Uzi and Jaden are rocking (were looking at your rap old heads), hip hop has already been doing for decades. They are just continuing the trend.

Lets take a look at the evolution of rule breaking style moments in hip hop fashion.

Before Kanye and Pharrell, Notorious B.I.G. was one of the fashion trendsetters in hip hop. Remember his influential style moments in the video below.

See the rest here:

The Evolution of Hip Hop Style That Broke All the Rules - VH1.com (blog)

June 6, 2017

Around 250 million years ago, terrestrial-bound turtles began to explore the aquatic environments, and with it, a profound, new ability first developed.

Breathable skin, made possible by the loss of their hard shells. Losing the hard shell is a feature that evolved independently in three turtle lineages during the Late Cretaceous, providing greater swimming speed and maneuverability.

And the loss of hard shells at different evolutionary branch points resulted in adaptive changes because of changes in respiration. They could maintain aerobic respiration for longer periods of time, and sustain deeper dives.

Now, scientists Tibisay Escalona, and Agostinho Antunes from the CIIMAR research institute in Porto, Portugal, and Cameron Weadick from Sussex University in Brighton, United Kingdom have traced the origin of these adaptations to different genes that are part of the mitochondrial respiratory complex in soft shelled turtles.

"It's reasonable to hypothesize that turtle mitochondrial DNA-encoded proteins may have undergone adaptive evolutionary changes associated with the loss of shell scutes and the invasion of highly aquatic eco-physiological niches," said the authors.

Mitochondria, which are passed along solely from mothers to offspring, are known as the powerhouses of the cell, responsible for aerobic respiration and 95 percent of the cell's energy currency in the form of ATP.

The research team investigated patterns of evolution in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) protein coding genes across 53 Cryptodiran turtle species (representing a total of 10 families), testing for adaptive or divergent patterns of mtDNA evolution associated with the evolution of soft-shells.

The researchers identified positively selected sites that occurred in the mitochondrial-encoded proteins of the oxidative phosphorylation system byusing various models and mapped these mutations onto the three-dimensional structures of the proteins, and predicted the severity of these structural changes on respiratory function.

They've shown that subtle amino acid changes can have large functional effects and saw the largest changes effecting complex one, the first and the largest domain of the OXPHOS pathway. Complex I, is responsible for an estimated 40 percent of the proton current that drives ATP synthase.

"Our data supports the notion that the adoption of highly aquatic lifestyles in soft-shelled turtles was associated with altered patterns of selection on mitochondrial function. Our analyses thus revealed that positive selection strongly affected mtDNA evolution along two (Trionychidae and Carettochelyidae) of the three lineages associated with the evolution of soft-shells, and that positive selection targeted multiple mtDNA genes in both cases," said the authors.

However, they did not see this adaptation in leatherback sea turtles. Why not? "This suggests that the evolution of a soft-shell in leatherbacks may have been linked to thermoregulation, not respiration, enabling the species to regulate heat gain and loss," said the authors.

Their findings highlight the valuable role of mitochondrial in the larger context of mitochondrial protein biochemistry, human diseases and turtle ecology.

Explore further: How to protect cells from selfish mitochondrial DNA

More information: Molecular Biology And Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msx167

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New study identifies energy metabolism adaptations linked to soft ... - Phys.Org

My 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article, A Mathematicians View of Evolution,presented two arguments against Darwinian evolution. The first was the more traditional argument from irreducible complexity showing that, contrary to what Darwin believed, major advances in the evolution of life, like major advances in the evolution of software (I focused on my own partial differential equation solving software), cannot be built up through many very small improvements. I have since written several Evolution News posts on this topic, most recently Why Similarities Do Not Prove the Absence of Design.

The second point was that the development of an advanced civilization on a previously barren planet seems to violate in a most spectacular way the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, at least the basic principle underlying this law, even if the Earth is an open system. I have written on this topic for Evolution News numerous times in the last few years, most recently Why Should Evolutionary Biology Be So Different?I have continued to develop this argument further in scientific papers, which have passed peer-review four times (most recently inPhysics Essays), and editor-review twice, as documented in the video below.

Although many other mathematicians and physicists find these arguments persuasive, the understandable reaction of most biologists seems to be, How can you possibly say anything important about evolution without even discussing the details of evolutionary theory? But it is important to remember that this is not a new argument I invented. It is the age-old, intuitive observation that there is something very unnatural about advanced civilizations arising spontaneously on barren planets. My contribution is only to show how absurd is the compensation argument always advanced to silence anyone who draws the obvious conclusions.

Since I am not a biologist, my contributions to the debate about intelligent design versus Darwinism have been limited. Nearly everything I have written since the 2000 MI article has just expanded on one of the two points made there. My latest and clearest such contribution is a video (above) that I produced with the help of my brother Kirk. It presents these same two points, in reverse order: the second law argument is presented in the first 13 minutes.

But I believe anyone who takes the time to watch this video will realize that you can indeed draw some important conclusions about evolution without becoming an expert on evolutionary theory. In fact I think he or she will realize that sometimes it helps to step back from the details and look at the bigger picture, which is what I have always tried to do.

Photo credit: Math professor, by Ed Brambley via Flickr.

Excerpt from:

What Can a Mathematician Contribute to the Evolution Debate? - Discovery Institute