Come on down to the UMM student center! Our BioClub is giving everyone an opportunity to take a selfie with Charles Darwin.
Be gentle. He is 213 years old, and tends to fold up at the knees and hips.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Looking very dapper, sir! And you as well PZ.
213 years old? Goodness, they should spend a few bucks and get the poor old guy fixed up. That looks painful as heck. He looks as broke down as I do.
Consult your Anatomy Primer, PZ, most people don’t have their knees or their hips at cardboard Darwin’s folds.
Celebration?
OT
The commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick has just resigned after several scandals.
(70s disco song “Celebration” played at maximum volume)
I am told Darwin was born the same year and the same month as a famous American who also had a beard.
birgerjohansson@5 Ted Cruz?
“He is 213 years old, and tends to fold up at the knees and hips.” Yes, but how old is Charles?
At least Darwin has the sense to wear a mask. Whoever is intruding on his selfie, however…
birgerjohansson@4,
The Amalgamated Union of Brazilian Electricians announced a week of celebrations!
Why covering anti-evolution laws has me worried about the future of vaccines
Chuck is looking a bit two dimensional in his dotage. He could eat a little protein to bulk up.
I’m envious of you biology types. When I was getting my MS in geology, all we had at Geology Club meetings was pizza. Although, nobody talks much about the fathers of geology (and even less about the mothers, though stuff comes out sometimes; observant individuals of all genders contributed to the science),
I spent too long getting that MS, because I was helping elderly parents and also taking many upper-division classes, since my BS was in computer engineering. (Science is far more interesting, but back in the Pleistocene when I was an undergrad, engineering was a sure way to escape my familial household. And it wasn’t a bad gig for a couple of decades, but not great for me. Ever since, as a high schooler, I pondered the different gravels in California’s Central Valley river levees, geology was on my horizon.)
I remember that some of the most interesting Geology Club talks we had, happened when our department was interviewing candidates for two open tenure-track positions. Candidates gave presentations on their research, and sometimes I was blown away. Wait, you went looking at that with THAT hypothesis? How’d you even get to that point? And the data gathering–how are you STILL ALIVE? (Geologists are not, as a group, particularly risk-averse.) Fascinating stuff, and presentations I refused to miss.
PZ, do you do that kind of thing for your Biology Club, when the opportunity arises? Also, do you arrange time for interested undergrads to chat with candidates? My university did, and my thesis adviser told me later that undergrads (upper division people known to professors) often had helpful insights.
Yes. We put undergraduates on the search committee!
Re: birgerjohanson @ #5…
And even the same day.
whheydt @ 14
I did not trust the “The same day” at first – I mean, what are the odds of Lincoln and Darwin being born the very same day!
Re: birgerjohansson @ #15…
Once you get it down to the same year and the same month, the odds of being the same day aren’t that bad.
If you want to get even weirder, take George Washington. When he was born (1732) the then-colonies were still on the Julian calendar. The British Empire made the switch in 1752, dropping 11 days. Washington had his birth date legally changed to keep his age correct. So while his birthday is officially Feb. 22, he was actually born on Feb. 11 (under the Julian calendar).
whheydt@16 (somewhat OT),
The gap between the Julian and Gregorian calendars increases by 3 days every 400 years (because the Gregorian has no leap year in years divisible by 100 but not by 400 – e.g. 2000 was a leap year in both, but 1900 was, and 2100 will be, a leap year in the Julian but not the Gregorian). Which led me to ask myself – when is the last time the two will agree what year it is? The answer, if I’ve calculated correctly, is January 1st Julian / December 31st Gregorian in the year 48996.
Humans to this day still rebuke Darwin evolution we are the third chimpanzees in 21 century.By the way when has clothing made women or men a genius let me guess Adam & Steve !
Re; KG @ #17…
Yes, I am familiar with the difference. At one programming job I had, there was a group that wrote common routines for everyone else to use for utility functions…such as date manipulation. At one point, they released a new set of date routines, so I set about doing a few tests.
On the first iteration, I found that 1900 was a Leap Year, so I reported that as a bug. On the second iteration, 1900 wasn’t a Leap Year (which is correct), but neither was 2000, so I reported that as a bug. On the third iteration, both were correct.
Trivia time…what was the country and year of the last conversion from Julian to Gregorian calendar? (Not including the Orthodox churches who still haven’t changed over.) The last one I know of was Greece in 1923.