What the Hell is a Transitional Species?

I think it was 60 Minutes or 48 Hours, some network news magazine, which had interviews with people who were out of work, unemployed, had lost their jobs, been laid off or, as most of them put it, "in transition". It does sound better than "I was put out on my ass." In transition implies some kind of movement from one thing to another, from one place to another. It's a positive euphemism, but like so many euphemisms, it rings hollow after some time. Some of job seekers had been 'in transition' for three years or more. That's a lot of time without a lot of movement.

Darwinism and Evolution have become a couple of my favorite subjects lately, along with Physics, Cosmology* and the building of stone buildings in the Middle Ages. I just finished reading Born to Run, on ultra-marathons, the kind of race where the participants run a 100 miles or more, in it the author asks (and answers) the question: Why would we as a species trade moving around on four limbs for running on two? (See also this article in Men's Health.) Pretty fascinating stuff about opening your chest for better air flow, losing all our hair so that we sweat, rather than pant, to cool off and the development of a ligament or two in our necks to enable us to hold our heads steady while we run. Chimps don't have those ligaments, we do. Chimps can't run down their prey, we can. Evolution says we and the chimps had a common ancestor who probably did not have those ligaments either, but that there would have been some Transitional Species between us (Steady Heads) and that common ancestor, probably a whole series of generations of ape-like creatures, each getting less hairy and taller, each getting faster afoot and gaining in endurance.

There will always be a Transitional Species (or many several) between the ancient creature of old and the present form. That's who I am now. A creature in transition, that is to say, I am like everyone else.

The latest news on my present job is that there isn't any latest news. We should know more in a week or three days or by Monday or on Saturday or real soon, depending upon who you talk to up in the office and how many minutes it's been since you talked to them last.

Meanwhile, my survival training has kicked in again. I have begun to take stock of what I have. That will be the subject of tomorrow's post, but so far I have found two containers of chicken stock in the freezer.

Joe(They were behind the bags of blanched green beans.) Nation

 - *Did you know there is a black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? That there is a black hole at the center of just about every galaxy they've looked at? Think about that for a moment -