didymos
Posts: 1828
Joined: Mar. 2008
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Gack. The article is a veritable quote-minefield, and also chock-full of other forms of creationist fail:
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"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript. |
Ellipsis Alert! Ellipsis Alert!
Letter to Lyell (bolding mine):
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My dear Lyell
Some year or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd. be forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briefly my views of “Natural Selection” depending on the Struggle for existence.—I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.
Please return me the M.S. which he does not say he wishes me to publish; but I shall of course at once write & offer to send to any Journal. So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed. Though my Book, if it will ever have any value, will not be deteriorated; as all the labour consists in the application of the theory.
I hope you will approve of Wallace's sketch, that I may tell him what you say.
My dear Lyell | Yours most truly | C. Darwin |
So upset was Darwin that he sent the paper to Lyell on Wallace's behalf (after telling Alfred that the renowned geologist had liked his earlier work, simply to brighten Wallace's day apparently), and even hastened to add that he'd like the paper back as soon as possible as he'd unhesitatingly see it published should Wallace so desire (something which Darwin intended to find out ASAP in the meantime). What a right bastard, that Chuck! Love how Pattycakes drops that self-deprecating "whatever it may amount to" and then characterizes this as "wailing", and conveniently fails to mention Darwin figured Origin would still do just fine. If I were describing this behavior, I'd think I'd have to go with "being a pretty nice fucking guy."
| Quote | | Darwin's examples of natural selection – such as the giraffe acquiring its long neck to reach ever higher into the trees for the leaves upon which it fed to survive – have been debunked. |
OK, for one, this was something that only showed up in the Sixth Edition of Origin (1872). For two: not entirely debunked. Disputed, sure. Disputed a lot, even. Hey: wanna know what one of the main rival hypotheses is all about, Pattycakes? Sexual selection....another phenomenon outlined by Darwin (in some book or other, I forget which). Oh noes! Evolution debunked by....evolution. Now try and guess what theory is employed in all the other scenarios there, P-Dog (and no, special creation is not a theory. No, neither is design).
See, Pattycakes, it poses no particular problem for evolutionary theory at fucking all if Darwin's ideas on this really were utterly debunked and, to take it up a notch, even roundly ridiculed by one and all, because Darwin's hypothesis on giraffes is just that: one single hypothesis proposed within the larger framework of evolutionary theory (which has learned a whole bunch of new tricks since Charles' day, to boot). In case you didn't know, which looks to be a safe enough bet, countless evolutionary hypotheses about all sorts of things have been proposed and then discarded because another evolutionary hypothesis turned out to be a much better fit with the evidence. Same goes for any other science you'd care to name. And no, that does not include "creation science".
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Giraffes eat grass and bushes.
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But also lots and lots and lots of tree foliage. Fuckwad.
| Quote | | And if, as Darwin claimed, inches meant life or death, how did female giraffes, two or three feet shorter, survive? |
By eating the stuff that isn't as high-up as all that, but is still quite comfortably out of reach to nearly every other potential competitor. It's certainly something there's actual evidence for anyway(bolding mine):
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With their vertically elongated body form, giraffes generally feed above the level of other browsers within the savanna browsing guild, despite having access to foliage at lower levels. They ingest more leaf mass per bite when foraging high in the tree, perhaps because smaller, more selective browsers deplete shoots at lower levels or because trees differentially allocate resources to promote shoot growth in the upper canopy. We erected exclosures around individual Acacia nigrescens trees in the greater Kruger ecosystem, South Africa. After a complete growing season, we found no differences in leaf biomass per shoot across height zones in excluded trees but significant differences in control trees. We conclude that giraffes preferentially browse at high levels in the canopy to avoid competition with smaller browsers. Our findings are analogous with those from studies of grazing guilds and demonstrate that resource partitioning can be driven by competition when smaller foragers displace larger foragers from shared resources. This provides the first experimental support for the classic evolutionary hypothesis that vertical elongation of the giraffe body is an outcome of competition within the browsing ungulate guild.
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I'd also imagine they eat some grass and bushes. But anyway...what've you got on offer, Patsy? Have you checked into Darwin's other examples? How 'bout current thinking on those that've been "debunked"? No? Darn it all to heck. And here I was thinkin' you wuz onto somethin'.
Oh, yeah: Darwin also never said inches meant life or death at all times either, El Bucho (bolding mine):
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So under nature with the nascent giraffe, the individuals which were the highest browsers and were able during dearths to reach even an inch or two above the others, will often have been preserved; for they will have roamed over the whole country in search of food. |
This says nothing about the neck-length of nascent female giraffes which were, I'd think, very obviously not the same thing as modern female giraffes.
I'd keep going but, seriously, almost everything in that article is either just dead fucking wrong or nastily distorted.
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I wouldn't be bothered reading about the selfish gene because it has never been identified. -- Denyse O'Leary, professional moron
Again "how much". I don't think that's a good way to be quantitative.-- gpuccio
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