Darwin Day
No, 2014 does not equal to 205. It’s just that this year and specifically this day, is the 205th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.
The 12th of February is celebrated in mostly scientific and humanist circles as Darwin Day. Why humanist? Well that’s a long story; ask any fundamentalist Creationist. Don’t know any? Good for you.
Amazingly since the publication of his seminal work On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life in 1859, Charles Darwin has been both vilified and praised, and continues to be the subject of misinformation and abject lies. Fortunately modern science is slowly tearing apart the veil of ignorance and mischief that has plagued the Theory of Evolution originally postulated by Darwin and refined by others.
You will find a brief history of the origins of Darwin Day here.
Darwin Award
And on a somewhat lighter note… The Darwin Awards has nothing whatsoever to do with Charles Darwin, although had he be still been alive, I’m pretty certain he would appreciate the humour.
The Darwin Awards were dreamed up by people on USENET groups, a precursor to modern Internet Newsgroups or Forums. The idea was to award individuals who through an act of sheer stupidity eliminated themselves (usually permanently) from the human gene pool.
It’s therefore fitting that just two days prior to Darwin Day, a member of the human species (debatable really) was involved in what I would call an act of premature disintegration, boldly announced his candidacy for a Darwin Award with a bang.
If this report in an Israeli publication is true (note that I haven’t read it anywhere else), then the Iraqi suicide bomb instructor who during a training exercise blew himself and 21 of his students up, is a winner by miles. Unfortunately the 21 students, will just have to be satisfied with being a piece of history.
Lenny Says 