Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 15, 2012

. . . actually . . . something like a pillow . . . maybe . . .

So… Paris Hilton’s descendents will have mattresses for backs?

And does unnatural selection involve silicone?

Pig is so stupid, tongues will be made of cheese curls….

Number Six, check out Get Fuzzy!

Acquired characteristics cannot be tinherited, so it kind of puts a damper on the whole theory.

that was lamarck’s hypothesis of acquired characteristics, not natural selection…

Cheese poofs for feet, I think, would not be a step in the right direction, as it were. Self-mastication is probably considered a sin….

Goat should have known better than to try explaining the book to Rat and Pig. The book alone was already over their heads, the subject matter would only just blow their minds. If they were Crocs the book alone would blow their minds and the subject material would leave them in a brain dead coma for the next five years, that’s when the plug would have to be pulled on the vegetables they’d have become.

I suppose the capabilty for typos can be tinherited.

Yes. First used by Dr. Oz to describe the squeakiness of the offspring of the Woodsman in Wizard of Oz (no relation admitted to).

he’s looking to get his toes nibbled. kinky evolution?

Change is happening, bound to happen…it finds its way, we are its servants…even if we think we’ve PROVED it can’t happen Lamarck-style, I wouldn’t bet against it in all possible situations. A look-see at what’s going on is always better than relying on a distant expert or even! a book.

That’s ok i never read when goat is talking

Cheese poofs are a shoe-in, pig . . . . ☻

LOL LOL!

Imagine Pig having children… That would be so sweet.

Rat having children? Not so sweet.

xxx

It’s basic eighth grade science! If something helps an animal survive, for example, a polar fox having white fur for camouflage when hunting, then future descendants gradually experience that change, because more white foxes will breed with white foxes, increasing the chance of the gene, because other colored foxes a dying out.

Have at it! Pig could change the way swine forever appear!

Bleah. Had to sit through a whole semester of this garbage for my capstone course to get my B.A. Never been so bored in my life.

Well, it makes as much sense as anything else that evolutionary theory has to offer.

Mojitobaby provided some helpful info! Thanks-best explanation I’ve seen in forever.

No, Pig, then you would eat your feet.

I never said I feared viruses; I said I didn’t want to subject myself to their spam and advertisements. That’s pretty straightforward.

Second, I’ve already had an exchange with Sanford directly, years ago; I found him dishonest, in that he took an extreme case of plant polyploidy (8x the original genome at a stroke) which has known detrimental effects, and extrapolated that to ALL plant polyploidy, and he simply wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of all the examples of plant polyploid mutations which have been beneficial, even though he knows perfectly well that they exist and that beneficial 2x or 3x polyploid mutations are in fact far more common than the extreme 8x example. That, specifically, is the kind of frustration I faced. Done that. Been there. Got the T-shirt. Feel no need to revisit. The people like you and Sanford, who are ideologically dedicated to this point, have no interest in acknowledging physical reality.

Speaking of “fearing” things, or not giving specific examples, you claim that my takedown of Gitt is “foolish”, but you do not (and let’s be honest, cannot) refute anything that was said. Maybe you think you have, but the flat fact is that you have no clue what information theory actually is and says, and that is why no working scientist is ever going to take that kind of criticism seriously. I gave a couple of links; if you are confused about what “information” actually is, as it seems that you are, try adding this post and this post.

And finally: cherry-picked quotes, incomplete and free of context, about why science only addresses what is testable, do not strengthen your case.

The case for evolution rests on the evidence of physical observations and testable predictions of evolution in the real world – evidence which you are grossly and deliberately ignorant of, and ideologically dedicated to denying exists. Nevertheless, that evidence is objective, physical, I have given you specific examples of it (you never did respond to Spartina anglica, or the specific examples of beneficial mutations in humans), and abundant. It isn’t ideological, or philosophical, it is simply something that works. Try to find some way to cope that doesn’t involve lying about a field that I happen to love, ’kay?

Now, helpful hint: Paragraphs Are Your Friend. Use <br /><br /> html tags between your paragraphs to space them. You are wrong and somewhat offensively ignorant, but you could at least be a bit more readable.

Also: you really ARE an idiot if you think that accepting evolution requires one to not believe in God (have you heard of Francis Collins, for example?), or if you think that believing in God and creation is the only possible thing that could give life meaning. But I’m sure that has been pointed out to you before and you have ignored it, as well.

Speaking of dishonest: although it is known that Richard Smalley became deeply Christian in the last year of his life, while he was quite ill, no quotes from him regarding evolution were published during his lifetime. The supposed quote about the “death of evolution” only appears in creationist literature after his death.

I do not know if creationists made the quote up, precisely the same way they made up Darwin’s supposed deathbed conversion story; I do know that it appeared nowhere while he was still alive to express an opinion, and that Dembski has a track record of invoking dead authorities who are unable to contradict him.

Regardless, if he said it, he clearly had no idea what genetics are and what biological evolution is and how it works. An authority in nanotech does not automatically confer an authority in any other field, sadly. But, I really do wonder what he would say if he were still alive.

Oh, and to cap it off: his wife, Judith Grace Sampieri, was never a biologist. She was a secretary, originally working for Shell when they met, but when she was not simply being a mother she only ever worked as a secretary, and didn’t even have a formal education involving biology. It’s yet another example, sadly typical, of creationists just ignoring reality and making stuff up to suit themselves.

Hah! I’m going to have to remember that description. “Ambulatory coconut.” Thank you.

And yes; although my own personal frustration is the fact that I genuinely do a fair amount of work designing things like BLOSUM80 or BLOSUM62 queries on the BLAST database, which can only work because of evolution. These are search algorithms based around different evolutionary distances, and how they work and what they do depends entirely on the fact that there IS diverging descent of different species from common ancestry.

It’s not just the fact that what we are doing quite literally couldn’t work if this weren’t the case, it is also the simple fact that I work with genetics, I know how mutations work (heck, I rely on them, again) and I’m looking at these thiings daily. There just isn’t any possibility of me seeing creationism as anything other than laughable nonsense which relies purely on an ignorance of biology or a commitment to ignore known biology. But, I’m called ignorant and arrogant because I won’t accept that I’m …uh, ignorant or stupid. I guess.

It’s like someone going in to a car mechanic and insisting that internal combustion engines don’t really work as claimed, in fact they are actually run by enslaved tiny elves, and the someone in question KNOWS this is true because they found reputable sources (ahem) on the internet which explain this. And when the car mechanic stubbornly refuses to take this seriously, why, obviously it is because he’s ignorant, or blinkered, or brainwashed, or whatever….

And again, one final thing: I am not a quantum physicist, but on behalf of quantum physicists everywhere, I am begging you, quit butchering yet another field of science with the same level of misunderstanding that you apply to information theory. It’s just dam’ ugly.

Two BooksThere was a man who had a bookOf Things Which He Believed;He followed it religiously—He would not be deceived.The story in its pages wasThe Truth that he adored—The world outside its ancient script,He faithfully ignored.When someone found a falsehoodOr a small mistake inside it(Or even some tremendous flaw)He eagerly denied it.The Truth was there inside his bookAnd never found outsideIf something contradicted itWhy then, that something liedAnd when he met another manWho had another book,He fell not to temptation—why,He didn’t even look.And, surely, there are other menWith other books in handWho walk, with views obstructed,Here and there across the land****There was a man who had a book(I find this quite exciting)Who looked upon a tangled bankAnd then… he started writing.He wrote about the things he sawAnd what he saw them doAnd when he found mistakes he’d madeHe wrote about them, tooHe shared his book with other menAnd women that he met—They found the catch is bigger, whenYou cast a wider net.They shared their observationsSo that everyone could read;They worked as a community,The better to succeed.They found they saw much further,And discovered so much moreWhen they stood upon the shouldersOf the ones who’d gone beforeIt’s a book that keeps evolving,Always growing, as we learn.Many people help to write it:Would you like to take a turn?h/t Digital Cuttlefish.

I was thinking pigs and singing rather than dancing…but hey, everyone needs a hobby. :)

Ah, the singing and dancing pig variety show! :¬D