Saturday Funnies from the DODO Heads
Here’s the latest DOPE from the DODO heads. They hate being laughed at. They want so passionately to be taken seriously.
Tuesday Feb. 12th is Darwin Day in America, anniversary of Daddy Darwin’s birthday (18 July 2006). To get ready for your Darwin Day Party or BAH! Fest (9 Oct 2013), you’ll want to have people ready to LOL. Get out your Darwin posters, and put the Bearded Buddha in his niche so your guests can offer sacrifices. Print out copies of the lyrics to The Blunderful Wizard of Flaws (2 June 2018). Prepare your games (12 Feb 2014, 9 Feb 2006) like Pin the Feather on the Dinosaur, Malthus Food Fight, and Climb the Fitness Peak. To keep your party up to date, here are some recent groaners from the news to help everyone get in the mood. Be careful, though, not to invite the types of people who want to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday instead. He was one of those party poopers who believed in intelligent design (ENV).
A taste for fat may have made us human (Science Daily). Your guests will love to hear this. Suggestion: for your Darwin Day party, have bacon, steak and ice cream for dinner.
Long before human ancestors began hunting large mammals for meat, a fatty diet provided them with the nutrition to develop bigger brains, posits a new paper in Current Anthropology….
“Our human ancestors were likely awkward creatures,” Thompson says. “They weren’t good in trees, like chimpanzees are, but they weren’t necessarily all that good on the ground either. So, what did the first upright walking apes in our lineage do to make them so successful? At this stage, there was already a small increase in the size of the brains. How were they feeding that?”
Tell them to eat up. They want to evolve to become less awkward and more brainy, don’t they?
The ancestor of all creatures on Earth lived a lukewarm lifestyle (New Scientist). In this article, evolutionists debate whether LUCA, the last universal common ancestor of all living things, came from hyperthermophiles – microbes that thrive in hot water, like at hydrothermal vents. “The story is not unrealistic,” one says. Suggestion: have your spa heated up extra hot for after dinner. Another suggestion: Do not read the article “Looking for LUCA” on Astrobiology Magazine. The fact-free article will likely put them to sleep.
All Too Human: The price we pay for our advanced brains may be a greater tendency to disorders (Weizmann Wonder Wander). As you describe the “Washing Machine Theory of Brain Evolution” to your guests, the dimwitted ones can comfort themselves by saying, “I may be stupid, but at least I’m not crazy.”
The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time (The Atlantic). This news is sure to bring football cheers to the guests. Darwin scores big time! Evolution is proven. How? Mice change fur color! Don’t tell them that the mice were all the same species, so no origin of species was demonstrated. The main cause for celebration was that Nebraska hunters warmed up to Daddy Darwin’s big story. How? They realized that slow deer are easier to shoot than fast deer. That must be survival of the fittest. Darwinism is proven: we all evolved from bacteria!
Roughly a third of Nebraskans believe that living things were created as they are now. Another third think that evolution occurs, but through God’s design. Given those beliefs, I asked Barrett whether he ever encountered resistance when talking to his new friends about his work. “In the early trips, when first meeting people, I would talk generally about genetics and natural selection. I wouldn’t use the E word,” he said. “It’s one of those trigger words where, in certain parts of the U.S., people just stop listening to you.”
But he added that all of them comprehended the essence of evolution, even if they explicitly rejected it. “A lot of them are farmers, who have a very good understanding of inheritance, and genetics,” he said. “A lot of them hunt, so they’ve got the survival-of-the-fittest thing down. They understand variation, and they know that a slow deer is easier to shoot than a fast deer. Inheritance, variation, fitness … all the pieces are there.”
Warning: if you have a puppy litter with different coat colors, hide them in the bedroom or take them to a kennel beforehand.
These are sure to liven up your Darwin Day Party. If you need more, just look for them in the Dumb Ideas category. You’ll find enough for a century of partying!
Cartoon by Brett Miller. Used by permission.