BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12

Subject: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 02:24 PM

How will you be celebrating, if you do? I will try to take the day off from work, possibly claiming a religious holiday (tongue firmly in cheek) - There will be celebrations around the world, google "darwin day" +celebrations and see what pops up!

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 02:27 PM

Is that the day they hand out the Darwin Awards for those who disqualify themselves from the gene pool?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Wesley S
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 03:00 PM

Darwin Day .Org

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 03:06 PM

I knew, I just KNEW, he had to be an Aquarius! He shares a birthday with Abe Lincoln, just as I do with G. Washington (OS).

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 03:26 PM

An Intro to Astrology for Rapaire who needs it even more than some.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 03:31 PM

Ooh, Amos, they should! I'm not sure when those go out...

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Feb 08 - 03:33 PM

February 12th, eh?

Okay. First I'll deliberately piss off a Creationist, then I'll go breed with someone.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 03:46 AM

Doesd that mean Feb 11th is Mitochondrial Eve?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 08:55 AM

LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 08:58 AM

No, it means February 11th is the single most important day in the entire history of the Universe. It means February 11th is my birthday, and before me nothing at all existed (what you THINK existed before me are things I thought up to confuse and challenge your faith).

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 12:40 PM

Well, happy birthday all over you, Rapaire. Thanks for starting the universe. I really appreciate that. By the way, if you're the one who designed it, I have a few quibbles. . . .

As to Darwin day, regarding my plans for the day (posted above), if I can't find a Creationist to annoy or a woman of child-bearing years to breed with, I will spend a quiet day just evolving.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 02:23 PM

Sorry, Don, the principle is that an individual can't evolve; it's a process the takes generations.

~ Becky writing from work
(Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona)
"just because we work on bugs doesn't make us all pedants..."

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 02:25 PM

Stirring the pot some more...hoping for primordial stew, again?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rowan
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 04:22 PM

Sorry, Don, the principle is that an individual can't evolve; it's a process the takes generations.

And some of us are, naturally, selective.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 04:28 PM

Hee hee...

And while individuals may not evolve, we are each a mutant in one or more various ways.

I think I'll start taking what's called President's Day off as a traditional holiday - it's pretty close to the day some Celts call Imbolc, the half-way point between solstice and equinox, so it's time for a holiday, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 06:13 PM

". . . evolving." Just in case somebody is seriously trying to correct what I posted above, that was a joke.

But seriously, folks:

Individuals can't evolve? Well, I don't know about that. Considering that we can now diddle with DNA and all that, obviously there is an intellectual component to evolution. We're learning to control it. Now, whether or not that is a good thing is another story. But individuals can certainly improve themselves through reading, education, philosophical contemplation, and a by number of other means, and then pass that educational, intellectual, or ethical enhancement along to others through various forms of communication. Thus, a single individual can indeed contribute to moving all of humanity a step further along the path to a higher state.

By the same token, the communication of ignorance, folly, and aggression can lead humanity backward to a less civilized state. This could qualify as a form of evolutionary regression.

The choice is ours.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rowan
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 08:01 PM

Your jest is safe with us, Don.

But, to be just a little serious, I can't really take seriously those folks who assert that evolution has never happened. Anybody who's had anything to do with plant or animal breeding will know that evolution is a fact. To take an example relevant to Oz, the pet budgerigar population in Britain and the US, if transferred back to the Australian grasslands whence they originated, would both die out and be incapable of breeding with the wild population because the pet populations are about twice the size of the wild type.

The creationists seem to not be capable of understanding that what's got their knickers really in a twist is natural selection rather than evolution.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Feb 08 - 08:23 PM

Evolution / natural selection is so obvious! Check the following evidence:

Lucy #1.    Lucy #2.    Lucy #3

I rest my case.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 03:29 AM

Considering that we can now diddle with DNA and all that, obviously there is an intellectual component to evolution. We're learning to control it.

But it isn't "we" who control it, even if we change DNA. The changes get tested against everything else, in a process called selection. We've actually been "interfering" in selection since humans began, and a billion years before- in a way that puts the wildest fantasies of the "holists" to shame, because every organism interacts with everything else (other organisms, the environment etc). And even "the environment" isn't a passive external given, in that organisms change that. For example, life created our oxygen atmosphere, fairly late on in life's history (for the first 2 billion years or so "life" meant bacteria, archaea and other forms perhaps that we haven't found yet).

Given that it's a chaotic process, and that the outcomes are sometimes sensitive to minute changes in inputs (the proverbial butterfly in Brazil), the prospect of human control over the world ecosystem is remote. We don't even know how whole chunks of it work- we are almost as ignorant of the deep seas as we are of Venus.

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 01:03 PM

Okay, scratch "control" and insert "influence."

Fully aware of all this, Keinstein. I do understand how evolution/natural selection works, at least within the confines of how little we actually do know, about this, and planetology, and astronomy, and cosmology, all of which are of a piece.

There is a Department of Astrobiology (I believe it started out being called "Xenobiology") at a nearby state university, and one of the members of that department is a friend of mine. The idea is to study such things as how--and in what conditions--live emerged and evolved here on earth and extrapolate this to conditions on other planets. Fully aware of the level of speculation involved, however it is a serious study. I follow all of this avidly, and my friend and I have had many long and fascinating conversations.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Amos
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 01:09 PM

Don:

Your research results are quite terrifying and I urge you to suppress them. If They are widely, um, disseminated, the stability of all Christendom will be seriosuly put at risk, and there is not elling what might happen.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 01:12 PM

Read the Tales of Known Space - interesting things about humans growing up on other planets, and about aliens...

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 03:17 PM

I find a lot of humans quite alien.

So, if individuals don't evolve how does the species evolve? It is after all made up of individuals.

Becky, if you guys work with bugs could you come fix our computers?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 06:10 PM

Rapaire - the answer is, over geological time. You get gradual changes all the time, like people getting taller over the generations, but for true speciation, you need not only a disaster that isolates the tail of a distribution, but also the lucky break that makes it the right (as in not wrong, not as in not left) tail for the new surroundings. That's why there are so many more extinctions than new species forming.

I'm trying to think of a good ritual to have for this holiday, other than sex, which is too obvious! Any ideas?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 07:41 PM

Some many years ago I resolved to get through an entire Darwin Day without walking on my knuckles or even dragging them on the ground.

It probably was a mistake sequestering myself in a favorite haunt to celebrate the event where, late in the evening, I found that some others were walking on my knuckles, although I did eventually make it back up atop the curbing.

I try to celebrate more sedately now, as a token of respect to "civilization" - whatever that is.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Feb 08 - 07:51 PM

Find a Neanderthal and eat them?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 03:09 AM

So, if individuals don't evolve how does the species evolve?

Sneakily, a tiny bit at a time, so no one notices. A species evolving is a bit like me growing old. I feel that I'm the same person I was at 17, but the photos prove me wrong.

For xenoscience, this is a book worth reading: What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life. It's by the guys who wrote the Science of Discworld books, and focuses on the universals of life (what can be expected to be common to all life in the Universe) rather than the ways life has found its local expression in the Solar System.

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 10:07 AM

Don! You did the one-and-only Lucy a real disservice! You could go with classic early Lucy or a racier and even younger shot (probably has lots of popups and nastiness if you don't have any ad blockers, etc. but this links straight to the image) here. It opens in a separate loading page, so just dump the page if it pulls any funny business.

With celebrity nudity, one sometimes hazards a minefield of small-minded smut purveyors

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Stu
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 10:22 AM

I can heartily recommend Stephen J. Gould's excellent book on the Burgess Shale A Wonderful Life. By telling the story of the discovery, interpretation and then re-interpretation of the assemblage of oddballs and wonders of the Burgess Shale Gould explains the detail of how evolution and natural selection works as well as pointing out the very unlikely scenario we found ourselves in, in which a species of ape that developed the ability recognise it's own conciousness became very successful in a very short space of time (before fucking the planet up big style due to a spectacular lack of self-control).

Highly recommended.

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 07 Feb 08 - 10:34 AM

Funny you should mention that stigweard; one of the martian book's major points is how un-unlikely our scenario is. I know (and love) Gould, but you've got to remember that the unlikely thing is the ape bit; whether something would have happened is a different calculation.

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: SINSULL
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 08:29 AM

And this year's Darwin Award goes to:
http://par4thecourse.newsvine.com/_news/2010/01/05/3716520-bungling-bank-bandits-top-darwin-awards

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:44 PM

Is this something Tea Baggers should protest?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 07:19 PM

All I can say is, thank God we have a Darwin day! If we didn't, people would have no understanding of how the Lord designed the beautiful natural evolutionary process that got us all where we are today. ;-D (And that is also allowing a chimpanzee to run for president.)

Celebrate Darwin Day by going to your local church, mosque, temple, synagogue or Celtic prayer circle of choice and giving thanks for the God-given miracle of Evolution that brought us from Lucy to Og the Cavemen to George Bush, Courtney Love, and Jesse Ventura!

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:34 AM

Oh, Little Hawk, you devil, you!

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: EBarnacle
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:55 AM

Folks, while you cannot actually evolve, you can optimize and hope to reach your ultimate capacity/capability. [No, that does not necessarily mean how much you can imbibe without overflowing.] Your children, if any can evolve from you and your beloved as the genes being passed are presumably slightly different, or if they are lucky, very different from where you started.

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Riginslinger
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 11:24 AM

"Evolution that brought us from Lucy to Og the Cavemen to George Bush, Courtney Love, and Jesse Ventura!"

             Which makes Jesse Ventura the end result of millions of Years of evolution. Where will we go from here, now that we've reached perfection?

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: GUEST,number 6
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 11:45 AM

"Where will we go from here, now that we've reached perfection"
.... Nancy Pelosi ??

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Darwin Day Coming Up Feb 12
From: Riginslinger
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 12:05 PM

Of course, there are always throw-backs!