It's A Special Birthday

[A_Wanderer]

Natural selection is turning 150

1858: The Linnaean Society of London listens to the reading of a composite paper on how natural selection accounts for the evolution and variety of species. The authors are Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Modern biology is born.
Scientists of the time knew that evolution occurred. The fossil record showed evidence of life forms that no longer existed. The question was, how did it occur?
Darwin had been working on his theory since 1837, soon after his epic voyage on the HMS Beagle. The hypermethodical naturalist wanted not only to classify the prodigious variation he had observed, but also to explain how it came to be.
He felt he would need to publish extensive documentation of natural selection to overcome popular resistance to so radical a notion. So he planned a comprehensive, multivolume work to convince scientists and the world.
Darwin was still working on his magnum opus when in June 1858 he received a letter from an English naturalist working in Malaysia. Alfred Russel Wallace was young and brash. When he conceived of natural selection, he didn't plan a 10-volume lifework. He just dashed off a quick paper on the subject and mailed it to the author of The Voyage of the Beagle, asking him to refer it for publication if it seemed good enough.
Darwin was crestfallen. Was he about to lose credit for two decades of work? Wallace had suggested that Darwin forward the paper to Scottish geologist Charles Lyell. Along with English botanist Joseph Hooker, Lyell was one of a small handful of people Darwin had shown early drafts of his own work on natural selection.
Darwin wrote to Lyell and Hooker, and they arranged for a joint paper to be read at the forthcoming meeting of the Linnaean Society of London. (Founded in 1788 and named for Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist who devised the binomial system of taxonomy, it is the world’s oldest active biological society.)
Neither Darwin nor Wallace attended the meeting. Wallace was still in Malaysia. Darwin was at home with his wife mourning the death of their 19-month-old son just three days earlier.

150th Anniversary of Theory of Evolution

 

[INDY500]

If it was so "special" maybe we should think about changing the year from 2008 A.D. to 150 A.E. (Anno Darwin)

 

[A_Wanderer]

It would be less arbitrary than the current system.

 

[INDY500]

It would be less arbitrary than the current system.

Acknowledgment of the most important figure in human history seems altogether reasonable, and far from arbitrary.

 

[deep]

the most important figure in human history .

I did not know who you were referring to

so I googled it.

The Most important single figure in human history.


Peace be upon him.

 

[INDY500]

It's all moot. Jesus, Darwin. At some point 2008 will become 1 B.O.

Before Obama.
For he is "The One."
Choosing, instead of his birth, the year of his enthronement.

Why, just the thought of it sends a thrill up one's leg.

 

[deep]

When I read it on the Drudge Report
I will know that it is a fact.

 

[maycocksean]

It's all moot. Jesus, Darwin. At some point 2008 will become 1 B.O.

Before Obama.
For he is "The One."
Choosing, instead of his birth, the year of his enthronement.

Why, just the thought of it sends a thrill up one's leg.

Oi.

 

[INDY500]

Oi.

Hey, your eyes will roll out of your head at this.

Townhall.com::A Messiah in Our Midst?::By Jonah Goldberg

 

[DrTeeth]

Happy birthday!

 

[maycocksean]

Hey, your eyes will roll out of your head at this.

Townhall.com::A Messiah in Our Midst?::By Jonah Goldberg

Well you weren't kidding. . .

To Town Hall,

To Goldberg's ridiculous column that does nothing to contribute to reasoned consideration of Obama's candidacy or of his opponent,

To people who actually take seriously the hyperbole with which some speak of Obama

And to the (few) nutcakes out there (who Goldberg of course managed to either find or mischaracterize to make them sound like nutckase) who actually think of Obama in Messiah like terms,

Now excuse me while I try to locate my eyeballs. . . .



Luckily one can wink without eyeballs.

 

[INDY500]

And to the (few) nutcakes out there (who Goldberg of course managed to either find or mischaracterize to make them sound like nutckase) who actually think of Obama in Messiah like terms,

Now excuse me while I try to locate my eyeballs. . . .



Luckily one can wink without eyeballs.

Is Oprah a "nutcake"?

Anyway, Goldberg didn't even use my favorite quote.
Halle Berry on being asked if she'd endorse Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: "Oh, my God, yes! I'll do whatever he says to do. I'll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear."

It's too early to get serious, talk to me after the national conventions and after the first debate.

 

[yolland]

Oprah and Berry are entertainers; think of some of Bono's silly treacle about various politicians over the years...how much sense does it really make to look to that quarter for consistently astute, dispassionate political analysis?

You're right that we've a long way to go yet, though.