The Big 150

So, today - November 24 - is the 150th anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species."

I could rhapsodize about the awesomeness of Darwin's book, but instead I'll just point you here, to give you a little sense of how important Darwinism is to modern biology. Whatever the haters* tell you, Darwin's theories continue to provide the foundation for our understanding of life on Earth. So thanks, Mr. Darwin. We owe you one.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, here's your daily dose of irreverent (Darwinist) humor:

(H/T Sam)



*Oh, and as for the other kind of haters - not the Bible-beaters but the Alfred Russell Wallace Fan Club who insist that Darwin was a plagiarist - I say unto thee, "Pffffbbbbtt."

"There's a life about to start when tomorrow comes..."

This item [via The Daily Galaxy] makes my heart pound with excitement, because, in the future, that very phrase may become outmoded. That's right, if you've ever cried out in fear and alarm that science is intent on forging a race of heartless cyborgs... well, you're almost right. Meet Madam Salina Mohamed So'ot, the woman without a heartbeat. This 30-year-old administrative assistant (from Singapore, apparently) has a late-model artificial heart that pumps blood at one continuous flow rate and does not beat. Ergo, she has no pulse.

Now, it's not so much the notion of everyday flat-lining that sets my heart a flutter (but oh, dear lord, are we going to have to change our idioms if this becomes prevalent!), it's the notion that this heart is actually more efficient than the meatbag ticker we've evolved with. I'll grant you, the whole four-chamber, dual-circulation adaptation (pictured below)

was a pretty awesome improvement over the old brackish amphibian salad spinner that was popular for a while, but we can do it better now! Technology 1, Invisible Sky-Beard 0! Wait, what's that you say? How can we be more intelligent designers than the Intelligent Designer? I'm sorry, I just couldn't hear you over the sound of your worldview imploding (metaphorically pictured below).

The exciting possibilities for human-driven human augmentation are starting to be realized now, and I have renewed hope that cyborg technology will really take off within my lifetime (and how cool is it to be able to say that with a straight face?). Perhaps I'm alone in not feeling an undue attachment to the clay from which I was sculpted. The human body is a low-efficiency, poorly-(un)designed machine, perpetually degrading toward decrepitude and demise. Once we can cost-effectively replace parts as they fail, or, better, upgrade them to more durable models, we can transcend our fleshy prisons in a way that would make a Cathar swoon. (Note to self: Second Albigensian Crusade against a sect of Cathar Cyborgs in the cyberpunk future - Montsegur 2144, if you will - is fertile ground for... something.) Of course, we are still light-years away from affordable cybernetics, but the pace of medical technological innovation is quick and, it seems, accelerating - so tolerate my sanguine outlook (pun intended) if you must, and join in if it humours you (two for two!).

That said, I think it would take a long time to get used to not having a heartbeat. And it would be creepy as hell for almost all of that time. But I think knowing that I was one step closer to being an optimized, streamlined Man Of Tomorrow (tm) would go a long way toward easing those reservations.

An Easter Homily

I am currently sitting in the library and, until about 60 seconds ago, I was taking a practice MCAT. All was quiet, and only a handful of other doughty souls were studying here on a beautiful Sunday morning. Enter two campus security personnel. The crackle of their walkie-talkies and casual conversation are reminders of the fact that Goucher's library has designated Quiet Zones, and I am not in one. I cram down my noise-canceling headphones and try to tune out the interlopers: hydrolytic cleavage and mitosis demanded my undivided attention.

Still, the officers were chatting only twenty feet away, so I couldn't help but notice when the conversation shifted from someone needing to open a locked room in the student center to biblical exegesis. "Over the years, you see," one guard explained, "the text has changed. Like, i's and t's. Sometimes, you know, a t gets crossed that wasn't before, so the word is different. Which is why you need to go back to the original text to get the true meaning. Most people," he continued, "just follow the text... without thinking about it." "Blindly?" his companion suggested. "Exactly. Blindly. But you need to really understand the original meaning."

I took off my headphones. I wanted to hear clearly when he started quoting Luther or Trithemius. But he had apparently run out of sermon in that direction, so he swerved, taking a new tack: "You got to have faith. When you look at the structure... of a tree, or when you look at the complicated structure of a cell, you know it couldn't have evolved. There had to be a creator, and that creator had to be infinite." (I'm paraphrasing here, because his actual words are rapidly melting from my memory, but I think that was the gist of it.) His companion made a soft noise of assent, or perhaps feigned interest, and thanked him.

The itinerant blue-light preacher bid him adieu and ambled out of my silent-once-more sanctum; his flock of one walked off in the other direction, into the stacks. I got back to my MCAT: "The concentration of the protein cyclin rises and falls during the cell cycle as shown in Figure 1. What mechanism could account for this oscillation of cyclin protein concentration?" 'Divine intervention' was not one of the answer choices.

You can't make a theory without breaking a few eggs...

And just in time for Easter, too:



And the creamy fondant center of this Cadbury Genius Egg is the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. *Crunch* *Schlurp* Mmmmm! The Origin... of Delicious!