Scarlett Johansson by Cliff Watts (x)

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:02:43 -0500

Scarlett Johansson by Cliff Watts (x)

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Fri, 17 May 2013 20:29:11 -0500

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Fri, 17 May 2013 20:28:33 -0500

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Tue, 14 May 2013 23:16:11 -0500

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Tue, 14 May 2013 09:39:57 -0500

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Tue, 14 May 2013 09:29:23 -0500

blehiris: pickledelephant: Guillermo del Toro while filming...

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:14:44 -0500

blehiris:

pickledelephant:

Guillermo del Toro while filming Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

favorite photoset of all time

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Sun, 12 May 2013 23:25:27 -0500

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Sun, 12 May 2013 23:25:20 -0500

thebluthcompany: First trailer for Arrested Development -...

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:29:36 -0500

thebluthcompany:

First trailer for Arrested Development - Season 4!

Oh my god.

tracesofmymelody: This was my favorite part of the game; Noah...

Sat, 11 May 2013 08:17:48 -0500

tracesofmymelody:

This was my favorite part of the game; Noah clapping while Bosh & Chalmers argue.

I was such a “Noah” as a basketball player

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Sat, 11 May 2013 08:16:04 -0500

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Fri, 10 May 2013 09:21:30 -0500

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Thu, 09 May 2013 09:52:22 -0500

→ Fried chicken

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:47:31 -0500

→ Fried chicken

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Wed, 08 May 2013 09:20:46 -0500

We all wear masks… metaphorically speaking.

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:02:23 -0500

We all wear masks… metaphorically speaking.

myyyyy Nigga! How the fuck you been! You get that cure I sent...

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:44:38 -0500

myyyyy Nigga!

How the fuck you been!

You get that cure I sent you?

we-are-star-stuff: Is it really possible to de-evolve? Once we...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:26:18 -0500

we-are-star-stuff:

Is it really possible to de-evolve?

Once we had tails and gills. Can we get them back? Some people say yes, because evolution can work in reverse. That’s the idea underlying Dollo’s Law.

Louis Dollo was an engineer who made his money in supervising mining sites, but found his true calling in supervising paleontological digs. He became a paleobiologist, famous for excavating a group of iguanodon. After years of unearthing giants, Dollo had to have had a few questions, including the tantalizing one of why dinosaurs died out forever. Their descendants, he knew, had to walk the Earth. Those descendants had had plenty of years to evolve, once again, into terrible thunder lizards, and yet they never did. Dollo decided that they didn’t because they couldn’t. Evolution was irreversible. For example, once you adopt the ordinary body plan of a reptile, hundreds of options are forever closed, and future possibilities must unfold within the limits of inherited design.

Dollo’s Law was proposed in 1893, and it has not aged well. It’s reasonable to believe that, once a species loses the ability to form a complex structure, it won’t easily pick up the knack again. Dollo believed that the mechanisms to develop a trait were lost along with the trait, so to reacquire it, the animal has to be exposed to the same conditions that caused it to evolve in the first place. In a world in which every other living creature is changing, and the climate and geography change too, conditions are not commonly reproduced. That being said, “it’s not likely,” is not a good basis for a law, especially one that tries to encompass the massive amount of species and conditions of life on this planet.

The problem with Dollo’s law is the really unfortunate idea that evolution is always moving forward… which is an odd concept. Evolution is a response to what is happening in the envirnoment at that time. That can lead to greater complexity or less. It is a simple response to survival, not a philosophical idea of betterment. Problems with Dollo’s Law stack up.

A group studying limpets - a species of sea snail that lost their coil and were presumed to be an evolutionary dead end - discovered that a specific species of limpet had recoiled and had lost their coil again before we got around to studying them in their present form. In 2003, it was proved that a winged species of insect had had, and then lost, wings once before in the past. The most recent Dollo defy-er is the dust mite. It’s been shown to have evolved into an independent creature that can survive on its own. Previously, it had been a parasite, and Dollo’s Law doesn’t allow for any parasite to regain its independence once it has evolved to be dependent on another organism.

But the primary nail in the coffin of Dollo’s Law is a creature that does not yet exist - the chickenosaurus. Scientists are getting a handle on expressing junk genes to turn birds back into their ancestors, the dinosaurs. This seems like a weak argument against Dollo’s Law. The animals aren’t evolving by themselves, they’re being sculpted by humans. But it strikes at the principle that supports the law. Dollo’s Law is based on the idea that the mechanisms for building a trait is lost along with the expression of the trait. The fact that chickens still carry the genes of their ancestors shows that the information is still there, and can still be exploited. We carry around information that shows that we can go back to what we once were.

So what kind of tail would you like?

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Sat, 27 Apr 2013 01:04:49 -0500

Thoughts of a Genius

Scarlett Johansson by Cliff Watts (x)

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blehiris: pickledelephant: Guillermo del Toro while filming...

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thebluthcompany: First trailer for Arrested Development -...

tracesofmymelody: This was my favorite part of the game; Noah...

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→ Fried chicken

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We all wear masks… metaphorically speaking.

myyyyy Nigga! How the fuck you been! You get that cure I sent...

we-are-star-stuff: Is it really possible to de-evolve? Once we...

Is it really possible to de-evolve?

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