Word of the Day: Dribbly

The other morning, exiting my front door, car keys and brown bag in hand, I chanced upon a peculiar sight. A pack of dogs were tearing down the street of my quiet suburban neighborhood wrestling, biting, peeing and otherwise carousing noisily at a steady pace, headed directly for me. There had to have been at least seven of them, each larger than the last, being led by, what I presumed was a horse-sized Great Dane/ Dalmatian mix.

I was transfixed. Between the growls and yips and occasional stream of urine hitting the sidewalk, I could only stare. I was reminded of one of the bloopers at the end of “Talladega Nights” where Will Farrell and that other guy make a public service announcement about packs of wild dogs terrorizing major American cities. I pictured these usually harmless house pets on a wild rampage of death and destruction, and was wildly amused, which is quite a feat for me so early in the morning.

The ravenous ball of dog parts got closer and closer. I stood motionless. How does one react to a pack of dogs invading your front yard? Does one yell or throw rocks? I decided to wait and feel out the situation. If figured, if they were just having a good time, who was I to interrupt?



As the biggest of the dogs lifted his gargantuan leg to piss on my hibiscus bush, I was enamored by the shape of his airborne leg. What a peculiar shape, I thought, how uniquely specialized and complicated a limb is, with all its bones, ligaments, fluids, joints and various other whatnots (I’ve been accused of being needlessly introspective when fatigued and/or intoxicated, at eight o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, it’s anyone’s guess which applies). One can almost conclude that this extraordinarily complex mechanism is so specialized, and so intricate, and so unique, that it would be outside the realm of pure chance that something so fantastic would have simply come into existence without the mindful eye of a Creator. Almost.

Then, as the Great Dane’s pee party ended, and he let the first few dribbles of runny poo onto my hibiscus’ leaves (I don’t even like hibiscus, but fuck, they’re mine and you can’t poo on them!) I shooed the pack of dogs away, instantly putting to an end their morning rampage and they all retreated to their respective houses.

On the drive to work, I remained fixed on the mechanism of the dog’s leg, and the human leg, and the arm, and horses’ legs (not to mention the curious nature of the hoof) and various other animals and their various modes of transportation. A thought struck me as I looked at the cars around me: Dumbing down the mechanism of evolution to a simple task of “construction” of species with available resources, (i.e., the best, most efficient organism available utilizing the least amount of raw materials and requiring minimal upkeep) the question is begged: If a robot limb, for example, articulated and complex, is so difficult and consuming to manufacture, why have no creatures, large or small, ever evolved wheels?

Consider this simple fact: wheels rule. The wheel is the kind of thing that gives James Burke a big British chubby. Not only are we talking about the fundamental building block of civilization (yes, James, even more than the plow) but just about the first innovation of man. Not only is it cheap, extraordinarily effective, adaptable to virtually any use (that involves “rolling”) but it’s so easy, you would think even the non-sentient but “all-knowing” and ultimately opportunistic forces of evolution would have figured it out first. Hell, if monkeys can figure out how to get ants out of a mound with a stick, the wheel seems only days away, right?

A lesser rational man would look to this question and say “See, evolution is not the answer to all man’s questions about the origin of life! Let me tell you about the Discovery Institute…” as he reached into his fanny-pack for a colorful brochure. We here at the OTR, however, are not so weak of constitution. You see, every learned person has to acknowledge that the theory of Darwinian evolution, his theory of natural selection (a.k.a. “survival of the fittest”) and modern evolution theory in general, possess great flaws.

That’s right, despite what Richard Dawkins says, evolution is a theory, sure a theory that is virtually agreed upon by every thinking and learned person on the planet and is the only far-reaching theory that meets and effectively explains the most of the fossil record we’ve been able to uncover up to this point, but still just a theory.



I feel significant joy when a Creationist makes the, oh-so-hilarious appeal to scientific reason in his attempt to debunk scientific reason for purely emotional and spiritual motivations. In that vein, a common (if underrepresented) criticism of evolution is related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and a concept known as entropy. Entropy (in a simplistic manner of speaking) is the manner in which chaos begets more chaos, change begets more change and so on and so on. Basically, entropy dictates that irreversible changes occur spontaneously in closed thermodynamic systems, which increase the likelihood that more spontaneous changes will occur. The basic conclusion one draws from this law is that order cannot come from chaos. It’s against the law.

The classic example is ice melting in tumbler of 18 year-old Highland, single-malt Scotch. The Scotch, you see, is room temperature, and the ice, we can presume, is at least 32 degrees Celsius. When the two are combined, chaos ensues. The chaos, in this case, is the temperature differential between the ice, the scotch and the room, and in this situation, the chaos that is causing both the ice to melt and the Scotch to cool, all in a chaotic effort to normalize the temperature with the surrounding air. This is, of course, an extremely dumbed-down version of the definition of entropy, but it’s the only way I ever managed to understand it, when it relates to Scotch.



Creationists state that the theory of evolution countermands the second law of thermodynamics in that it dictates that the ordered and varied existence of life on this planet evolved from the chaos and disorder of, well, whatever came before. This laudable appeal to reason and science is engaging, but ultimately worthless, dribbly shit, similar to what is currently gracing the leaves of my hibiscus plant.

"The use of thermodynamics in biology has a long history rich in confusion" — Harold J. Morowitz

My own confusion is paramount, but the nut of the issue is this: entropy can only increase in a closed system. The problem is, the Earth is not a closed system, like a stone or a glass of water or a microscopic organism, our planet is powered by the Sun.

The really sticky issue is that “entropy,” as it’s defined in thermodynamics (there are numerous other definitions relating to information technology, communications, etc.) can’t really be fully explained because, as John Von Nuemann put it, “No one really know what entropy is anyway.”

As much as this whole post seems like some bizarre exercise in futility (as opposed to all those eother, really important and life-changing posts that frequent this forum), I assure you it is not. The point is that occasionally, we humans get so focused on the moment at hand: what to make for dinner tonight, when am I going to find the time to visit Grandmother’s grave, did I remember to feed the gimp?, we often forget that there are a lot of big ideas out there. These ideas exist not to make us confused or feel stupid, they exist because someone just like you and me (well, mostly like me) found the time to think about them. Isaac Newton saw an apple fall to the Earth, and wondered why? Albert Einstein saw the Sun warming the Earth, and wondered, how? OJ Simpson learned of the murder of his ex-wife and her lover and wondered, whom? These were great men, but not great because they possessed some superpower (though OJ had a mean rushing season in ’68) they were great because they applied their gifts to their fullest extent.

The big ideas in the world are the product of Man, and the application of his skill, not gifts from god. When an NFL running back steps in front of the camera to thank god for helping him bring home that touchdown, he’s not prostrating himself in front of a higher power, he’s diminishing his own hard work and his own talent and intensive training. He’s admitting that he is not the master of himself, which in the end, is the only true power a human has.

So why have humans, pinnacles of achievement never evolved something akin to wheels? It’s a tricky, and somewhat stupid question, but after much thought, I’ve come up with a few ideas. Firstly, evolution is not a zero-sum game: for every major achievement in evolution, there are variable stages. Take the lungs, for example. The fossil records gives us an incredible array or various types of tissues, sacks, prongs and all sorts of other weird stuff that creatures have used to utilize oxygen from the air or water. The big problem with a wheel-type appendage is that variable stages required to get to the end product (a real, flesh and bone wheel and axle mechanism) would be completely useless. Also, you have to consider that for quick stopping and turning, climbing and jumping, nothing really beats a set of legs, even primitive ones. Also, I’ll bet the interstate system really sucked about 130,000 years ago.