Happy Birthday Charles!

[GT WT]

The Link

It's Charles Darwin's birthday. I hope everyone will join me today in lifting a mug of Shiner to the memory of a great scientist. Indeed, he changed how we view ourselves and our world.

 

[Nordberg]

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[Texas0407]

I wonder how many those people believe in Isaac Newton's kooky theories of "gravity".

 

[accuratehorn]

About 34%, the rest think it was filmed on a movie set.

 

[Coelacanth]

I'll expect similar threads next week (February 19), then again on March 14. And I must have missed the thread you started back on January 4.

Or are we being selective?

 

[Nordberg]

I would assume that this will be Darwin's one and only 200th birthday.

 

[GT WT]

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[utexas_61]

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[Nordberg]

The Round Mound of Rebound turns 46 next Friday.

 

[MilkmanDan]

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[utexas_61]

1828 - Charles Floquet, French statesman (d. 1896)

1917 - Charles Drake, American actor (d. 1994)

???

 

[MilkmanDan]

I was going for Charlie Brown, but close enough.

 

[MaduroUTMB]

Any person who "believes in" the theory of evolution has completely missed the point.

 

[71grad]

Happy Birthday Charles. God bless.

 

[A. BETTIK]

Speaking of Coelacanth, the fish that is, why have we changed so much in 5 million years and the Coelacanth fish has not evolved for the past 100 million years?

I can see two sirens that might draw a species to change. Of course you have to have the random mutations to feed the change, but then you have to have an environment that rewards the cummulatively significant change or a brain that can exploit the change.

Any good source recommendations that touch on this stuff?

 

[Napoleon]

If you look into the Darwin story, he really just stole someone else's ideas who had been doing the field work and had published a less known study a year or two before. But Darwin was well respected in the scientific community and was able to steal and then claim as his own.

Think:

Steve Jobs taking credit for Xerox's software development

...or to a lesser extent...

Bill Gates stealing the Macintosh software and basing Windows off of it.

 

[NBMisha]

Napolean
He had formulated the theory years before publishing. He heard of Wallace and then went ahead and published the existing draft.

 

[Coelacanth]

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[NBMisha]

Your insight, or your principle, was right on, sarcasm or no.