To: Evidence
Re: Lizards (uncooked)

I know you keep saying that the lizards didn't evolve, they just grew, or adapted to the environment. Perhaps in this case you are right-- we won't know until they do the DNA tests.

But, from what information we've currently got, it is extremely likely that they did evolve.

Before Darwin, Lamarck came up with a similar theory of evolution, except he believed that acquired traits were heritable. His theory was that if a short-necked giraffe wants to eat leaves from a tall tree, it will keep trying to get them and perhaps stretch its neck from this constant exercise*, and then, when it breeds, its offspring will have longer necks than usual because of this.
*Never mind that it couldn't significantly lengthen its neck in this manner anyway.

Lamarck was proven false by experiments like the one where they cut the tails off mice and bred them, to see if their offspring would be tailless. They had tails, of course, because it is in their genes to have tails, and if someone cuts off the tail the genes will not change to reflect that. The genes will, however, differ from parent to offspring if there is a mistake in the DNA transcription, and that is how mutations and variations happen.

If the first Italian wall lizards on the island had simply grown, or changed their eating patterns, and nothing else, then their offspring would be no different biologically from regular Italian wall lizards elsewhere.

I doubt that this will change your mind all of a sudden, but now do you at least understand what evolution is and is not?

Also-- you said:
"developed cecal valves—muscles between the large and small intestine—that slowed down food digestion in fermenting chambers" I suspect that they had these valves and now these same valves are bigger by use.

Well, I suspect that would have been the first thing the scientists would have suspected too, and checked to see if they had had them in the first place. "Developed" != "enlarged". "Developed" means they grew new ones over subsequent generations. You can't dismiss an argument by saying "I suspect that's not true" but not offering any real proof.

What year did they start putting RFIDs in passports?

Also: what would happen to you if you tried to get on a plane with a nonfunctional RFID in your passport? Given the state of things, I doubt they'd believe it was an accident, and even if it was they'd probably use it as an excuse to 'vanish' you for eight hours into an interrogating room anyway.

Evidence just mixed up "advocate" and "abdicate".

Advocate: to publicly recommend or support.
Abdicate: to renounce one's position, or to fail to fulfill one's duty.

SPANDRELS! That was the word! But don't mention spandrels (or Stephen Jay Gould) to people studying how language evolved, it tends to make them froth at the mouth. Though I can't say I much like the idea that the capacity for language was a spandrel, either...

Takuan-- Dunno if you were thinking of this, but I am forcibly reminded of that scene in the beginning of A Canticle For Leibowitz: "Bless me, Father; I ate a lizard."

Like Racer X said: evolution is NOT intentional. (I had a great big paragraph about this, but then I looked at the rest of this post and decided s/he had already said it more succintly than me...)

What a lot of people forget, though, is that unless a mutation directly helps or hinders the animal, it will neither go away in time nor grow more prominent. Not all traits and abilities are there because they are useful-- perhaps they were useful once, but the animals have adapted in different ways and no longer need them.

Case in point: everyone has certain muscles on their face, that, when contracted and released rapidly, will make their ears wiggle. I am one of those unusual people who can voluntarily control those muscles, and wiggle my ears whenever I want. (Actually, I once met a man who could not only wiggle his ears but also rotate them, in different directions, independently of each other! That was really creepy...)

Anyway, being able to wiggle your ears does not impede your survival (I hope), and unless there is some culture I've never heard of where this is considered very attractive*, by no means will a greater percentage of people in the 48th century be able to wiggle their ears, but neither will the ability be entirely lost.
*Uh-oh... I just HAD to invoke Rule 34, didn't I? Sorry.

Also: does anyone know what why wall lizards are called that?

At least it wasn't a porcupine.

Same here-- two students in my school died in a highway accident two years ago (along with almost the entire family of one of them).

One of their parents kept calling his daughter's cellphone several times a day, afterwards, just to hear her voice.

But as KryspyJo said, Verizon's probably spreading the story around as much as they can in a vain attempt to make everyone forget about their normally atrocious customer service. (Anybody remember this?)

The crowning touch is the elongated toes. That demented thing wouldn't be half as terrifying if only it didn't have those toes.

At the beginning of a five-hour bus ride to Boston last year, my sister put on the first song of a really huge Gogol Bordello playlist and handed me her iPod. God only knows how the woman next to me interpreted my reaction :)

#4-- Thanks. I did not know the frontman was in Everything Is Illuminated (or in fact that they'd made a movie out of it). *snuffles off to investigate*

If you meet a transsexual who appears (on the surface, anyway) halfway through the transition, and you honestly can't tell whether they're a man becoming a woman or vice versa-- how do you go about asking what pronoun to use?

I got around this by privately asking the person who introduced me, but it just doesn't seem like there's any polite way to do it...

The reason for all of this can be explained by something that happened a few years ago.

When I was fourteen, I went to every adult I respected, and demanded to know why people go along with things they know are wrong (this was about the time Abu Ghraib became public).

One of them, Jono, thought a bit and said, "I'll show you. Go stand over there." I did so. Then he said, "Okay, now give me five jumping jacks right now!"

My hands were at about shoulder level when I stopped and looked at him suspiciously. "Wait... why?"

"Good girl!" he said. "Most people only remember to ask afterwards."

With Abu Ghraib, and other such military abuses, it's not quite that simple, because soldiers are heavily conditioned to follow orders. They have to be, and it takes a strong-willed person to speak out in that sort of situation.

But, in a nutshell, what Jono said is exactly right. "I was following orders" is not an excuse.

I've heard the full "I Have A Dream" speech played at school each year... it sends shivers up my spine each time, even though I know it nearly by heart.

I wish more people could speak like that today. If Cicero could see modern politicians, probably the only one who wouldn't make him wince (in terms of oratory, anyway) would be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Likewise. This has brightened my day considerably.

P.S.--

@ #3 Wangleberry

That is such an ignorant thing to say... I do see the resemblance to a Hindu temple, yes, but (a) like Takuan said, Hindus do not worship objects, and (b) since when do Hindu gods look like non-anthropomorphic colorful towers?

Think a bit before making dismissive remarks about religions you are unfamiliar with.

That is what I have always thought cities should look like...

Let's all get together and build a real one.

I agree about James Blaylock-- but Jeff VanderMeer and Hal Duncan are in there, which kind of makes up for it.

For over half of my short life (I am seventeen now) I was a fervent patriot who believed every little thing they fed us in school about America being great and just and righteous. When my parents and grandparents told me about their lives in the USSR and about various relatives of ours getting vanished in the middle of the night and such, I remember feeling so proud of my country: we are better. Things like that don't happen here.

I wish I had anything left to be proud of.

wish I lived in SF so I could go to all these great things... how about posting similar stuff in NY? I know it must exist out there, but it's so hard to find out about...

AHAHA it's a Dr. Who reference inside a post about Dr. Who!

(adherents of the repeated meme? hello? anybody besides me remember that?)

sounds like a steampunk war-cry :)

I started reading it this morning... It's excellent.

Wintermute has conquered the intarwebs, it seems... Why can't good things from SF happen in real life?