As you're all aware (from monitoring my online activity), I'm searching through Dr. Ricardo Duchesne's tweets to find a specific meme (a depiction of a black male surrounded by numerous pregnant white females). If I find that meme I'm going to add it to this blog. I'm also attempting to sort through my Yahoo account so that I can delete a number of emails and therefore resuming receiving and sending emails.
Ancestral Polynesians who were driven to explore the open ocean with their sophisticated navigation and large canoes (as we saw in chapter 2) may have created selection pressures on genes that better equipped their bodies to cope with periods of starvation or cold while at sea. Their journeys likely imposed selection for more efficient handling of the energy needs of the body via what are sometimes termed thrifty genes. Plus, living on islands - despite people's romantic fantasies - is extremely harsh because adverse weather (like hurricanes) can wipe out all of the available food for substantial periods, which imposes a set of constraints similar to long sea voyages. Adaptive though they were for the long journeys and isolated living centuries ago, these genetic changes are a prescription for diabetes and obesity today, now that the descendants of those Polynesians have built settlements on land and obtain sources of food that are more stable. (Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society)
