Comments

  1. leftwingfox says

    Um… since evolution happens at the population level, not the individual level, wouldn’t an orgy be more appropriate? “Let’s make a new generation of mutants*!”

    Not more appropriate for a classroom, of course…

    (*Mustangs, autocorrect? Really?)

  2. dianne says

    I’m afraid I’ve already evolved as far as I intend to and am now dedicating my time to making sure that individual cells in my body don’t evolve any further. Specifically, that they don’t evolve unrestricted growth and drug resistance.

  3. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    I’m out of the gene pool (up on a deck chair smoking a stogie and absorbing UV rays). Even if I did evolve more, there is no longer a path available for my genes to enter the gene pool.

  4. says

    @Reginald Selkirk – Ah, the wonders of abject ignorance.

    A neutron cascade of sufficient strength to induce neutron absorption in a length of cloth would be strong enough to fry pretty much everything in the general vicinity. If such a thing could be caused by an earthquake of any strength, it would have destroyed every living thing in Jerusalem. It is even less likely that a natural event would have caused a neutron beam narrow enough to affect only the shroud.

    Assuming that this impossible chain of events DID happen, then the imprint on the cloth would be akin to the imprints left behind by victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing more than radioactive ash. I doubt even the Christian God could resurrect someone who had been obliterated that completely. Aside from which, such a destructive force would have obliterated the cloth, too.

    But then, Christians excel at ignorance: it seems to be the one thing they are any good at.

  5. David Marjanović says

    I’m afraid I’ve already evolved as far as I intend to and am now dedicating my time to making sure that individual cells in my body don’t evolve any further. Specifically, that they don’t evolve unrestricted growth and drug resistance.

    Bingo!

    A neutron cascade of sufficient strength to induce neutron absorption in a length of cloth would be strong enough to fry pretty much everything in the general vicinity.

    Neutron bomb.

    If such a thing could be caused by an earthquake of any strength, it would have destroyed every living thing in Jerusalem.

    And the “earthquake” itself would have had to be a fucking supernova. The authors’ very existence proves that they are wrong.

  6. Nick Gotts says

    But if you’ve watched the well-known documentary about 1st-century Judea, The Life of Brian, you’ll know that alien spacecraft were fighting a war in the vicinity of Jerusalem – surely their beam weapons could have been capable of causing such an effect?

  7. jnorris says

    Thank you Reginald Selkirk for the earthquake link. Now we know why the Roman governor of Judea never reported the earthquake to the emperor.

  8. Reginald Selkirk says

    jnorris #12: Now we know why the Roman governor of Judea never reported the earthquake to the emperor.

    Right, because he was too sick from radiation sickness.

  9. redwood says

    @16 My daughter worked part-time in the gift shop at a science museum in Tokyo last summer. Her favorite souvenir was a giant squid that was made to order, costing about $300 for one 3 meters long. I wonder if they ship to Minnesota?