Slashdot Mirror
Top 10 Evolutionary Adaptations
oneill40 writes "The New Scientist has an interesting article up listing the Top 10 most amazing things to have evolved, including sex, death, the eye, language and parasites!" From the article:"Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in." J adds: Number four, Language, got a careful look from Carl Zimmer a while back. It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
How about DNA? It's contains all genetic information that determines how cells are formed and how they behave. It's what allows cells to copy the essence of themselves from one generation to the next, and allows them to continue on the platform from where the last generation left off. If our cells weren't packing around little mini protein 'storage devices', not a whole lot would be happening.
Photosynthesis is definitely the top for me. It changed the chemistry of the entire planet. Of course the human brain has done the same, but we will soon be extinct and out impact rather small compared to photosynthesis.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
Death is what allows evolution to occur in the first place. Without death, organisms couldn't be replaced by ever improving versions of themselves.
The capacity to develop and understand evolution is something biological. Otherwise, every animal could learn a language just as complex.
Popular presentation of evoltuion, including what I was taugt in high-school biology, are so dumbed down as to be incorrect. The creationists have an easy time attacking what's commonly presented as "evolution". I don't think evolution is really that hard to teach (aside from the controversy), and the actual beliefs of scientists about evolution are far, far more credible. How did we go so wrong here?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm not accusing the people who anthropromorphize as being bad scientists - I'm sure that they have the proper understanding of evolution and natural selection and similar concepts within their mind. However, what you have to realize is that your audience may not. Making consistent use of words like innovation and discovery, and general verbs associated with multicellular life makes the article sound more like journalism than science.
I realize that it's probably convenient to not have to worry about portraying modern evolutionary theory in the right manner, but it's also responsible. I wouldn't be bringing this up if I didn't run into it every single day - we anthropromorphize to such a degree that eventually we ourselves begin to believe that evolution really is a deliberate mechanism that acts towards creating the "perfect" life form.
The solution? Likely not to happen while Christian Conservatives still hold popular sway in politics, nor until science figures out how to convey its teachings to the lowest common denominator.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why not? Many organisms already survive long enough to compete with their offspring. If the descendants of an organism are "better" than the ancestor, then they will outcompete the ancestor regardless of whether or not the ancestor is genetically programmed to die.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
The "lowest common denominator" of course being the likes of Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, etc. Yeah... what a bunch of dolts! You tell 'em!
Dishonest creationist tactic #874: list, as support for creationism, the names of "creationist Scientists" whose work was not in any field related to biology, whose work did not support any actual creationist claims and most of whom were dead before Charles Darwin was even born, much less published Origin (though Faraday didn't die until 1867, but that's hardly time for a non-biologist to fully examine the evidence for evolution and draw conclusions).
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
With regards to the first three items on the list, these are best described as "vestigial" stuctures. That is, they're body parts that evolution forgot--they once served a useful purpose, but no longer have any value or function.
The same thing can be said of wisdom teeth, for example. Or paralell ports.
Presumably, as these structures continue to cause problems for some members of the species, while providing no advantages, evolutionary processes would eventually eliminate them.
Who believes that their neighbour's sins affect them?
A huge number of people, otherwise homosexuality wouldn't be descriminated against by law, nor would drugs, gambling, prostitution, buying cars on Sunday, and all sorts of other things be prohibited in at least a few places in the US.
If my sins don't affect you, then why are you (generic, not personal) telling me what I can do in my own home with consenting adults behind locked doors?
Learn to love Alaska
Images formed upside down
Why does it matter where the photo-receptors are physically if they can be logically connected in any way?