I want Darwin Claus to bring me random mutations that may or may not be beneficial to my survival and my capacity to create offspring.
Random mutations are the least potent source of change in evolutionary mechanisms. So much so that some experts don’t even consider them as one.
Reinforcement of already existing traits through variation between individuals under environmental preasure is the main mechanism. (i.e. when food sources are high, individuals with longest reach are the fittest).
And the longest reach comes from… random mutation?
There is natural variation between individuals.
Natural as in naturally occurring mutations?
To be fair to him, this type of variations could also be due to epigenetics, although he obviously has a rather fuzzy understanding of what he’s talking about.
How to say that you didn’t read Lamarck without saying that you didn’t read Lamarck. Even Darwin agreed with him.
You seriously believe in Lamarck? Like, I don’t know, I’m not a native speaker, maybe I’m missing something.
How many fucking times do we have to repeat this: TRAITS ACQUIRED DURING LIFETIME ARE NON-INHERITABLE
If you lose your fingers in an industrial accident, your children aren’t going to be born fingerless, are they?
Giraffes don’t have long necks because one little giraffe long, long ago tried really, really hard to grow a longer neck, but because giraffes who had been born with longer necks could compete better than those without, and pass on their genes. And they got those necks due to mutations.
Environmental pressure selects for benefitial mutations, while the mutations themselves are random. That’s literally the mechanism of evolution through natural selection.
TRAITS ACQUIRED DURING LIFETIME ARE NON-INHERITABLE
Not so fast. Epigenetics is real.
Neither am I a native speaker so I worded my joke poorly. I elaborated in another comment but let me point out that in epigenetics, traits gained during lifetime are inherited, but within the range of what mutations “allow”.
Appropriate username
Lamrack has been disproven
But not by Darwin. The modern evolution theory is a synthesis of Darwin and Mendel. I should have elaborated but the joke was that Darwin didn’t have mutations in his theory yet and when you stick to Darwin Claus, there ain’t no mutations
Yes, this thread is about Darwin Claus. Not other (scientifically) magical science peeps. I’m sorry people didn’t get your joke.
Why don’t we adapt religious holidays and make them more sciency?
Theists do this all the time, and it would stop them from claiming we aren’t allowed to celebrate their stolen holidays.
Quantum Santa can deliver presents everywhere at the same time, but shouldn’t be observed, or it would collapse into a singular outcome.
Won’t the gifts also be a mere probabilitywave, and observing the space under the sciencemas tree would cause it to collapse into a single gift at a single location?
Each present is a real particle, but their distribution is affected by the self-interaction of quantum santa. This allows every present to have the same initial trajectory but different destinations.
Ah yes, Santa Claus and the religion of… Coca Cola?
There are a bunch of events who use holiday times for other things.
In German we refer the time from first christmas day to first day of the next year just as “between the years”. (Some other languages do that as well) It seems the English term for that is “twelve nights”. That refers to a lunar calendar (354 days) being a bit shorter than a solar calendar (365.2422 days), which means you need to add leap days after the last day of the year to synchronize it with a solar calendar and the seasons which correlate with it. The roman calendar actually started with march.
Though it wouldn’t be hard to give christmas and the time around it more sciency names. Christmas is based on the winter solstice, the Roman calendar had winter solstice on 25th december and they celebrated the birth of their sun god, where they had parties and exchanged gifts.
When I was a kid Darwin Klaus was played my dad. I play Darwin Klaus now. It is a great honour and a great responsibility among the hairless great apes. I love Sciencemas because it’s a beautiful way to celebrate the great brain Nature gave us, and the great discoveries we made along the road.
That’s not an atheist thing, you’re thinking of asantanists.
The Darwin child 😎
