Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Evolution Shmevolution

I must say that it's official:  Jack Bauer and I have officially called it quits and I've moved on.  The 192 hours/8 Days I spent with Jack will never be forgotten.  While he is in hiding from the Russians, I have no choice but to pursue other interests.  There is a new man in my life now.  He's over 200 years old and his name is Charles Darwin. 

The last two weeks have been nothing but Darwin, Darwinian Medicine, Evolutionary Medicine, natural selection, survival of the fittest, Galapagos Islands, the Beagle, finches, traits, speciation, and so on.  So many times through a person's education, they will sit back and ask themselves, "What the hell am I ever going to need to know this for?"

Well, I am not asking that question.  Instead, I am asking myself a different question.  "How can I relate evolution to senioritis?"

First things first.  We need to define natural selection and evolution.  Natural selection is the process by which only organisms with the best adapted traits for the environment survive.  Evolution is a change in genetic makeup of a population over a period of time. 

So, let's say that your "population" is a group of college seniors.  Within this population, there are seniors with the gene for senioritis and seniors that do not have this gene.  We'll call graduation our "survival".  The seniors without the senioritis gene are more likely to survive through graduation, while the senioritis sufferers die off, or go work for Wal-mart.  Natural selection is all about reproduction, so to tie that in... all those seniors who graduate celebrate with alcohol on graduation night, mate, and produce the next generation of non-senioritis sufferers.  

I think this would be an excellent presentation for some of the upcoming science events.  I better quit wasting time and start a proposal.

1 comment:

  1. You're so funny Melissa! You should turn this blog into a book!

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