Acronyms for evolution

[Inferno]

This may sound like a strange request, but I'm on an Erasmus semester from September until January but it apparently (let's see if it's true) won't be that hard or much to do, simply because I've already done a lot of it from my first (unfinished) degree. Because I will have a lot of free time, I was looking for something to do in that time. I already have my Bachelors thesis cued (category: hard work), another project of mine (category: making money) and I was looking for one that fits the category "intellectual, yet funny". I came up with the following idea:

I want to use Prezi to compile one big, as well as several small, presentations on evolution (and possibly creationism, atheism,theism and other topics as it develops), in the hopes of some day having a large set of presentations that will be edited and used by the community. Kinda like Wikipedia, but in presentation form. Yeah I know, that's a huge task I've set myself. And yeah, I also know I probably won't ever make it. Anyway, that's not the point. Right now, I want something creative to start off the presentation: An acronym of evolution for the presentation.

Basically something like:
The Theory Of Evolution

T for Theory
H for Holotype
E for ...

and so on. Basically, the heading should describe evolution (maybe something like "Evolution - The Grand Design" or "Evolution - The Greatest Show On Earth" or "Evolution - Darwin's Dangerous Idea") and the words themselves should be major topics in the theory, like genetics, palaeontology, evo-devo and others. Or related topics like "hoaxes", "creationism" and "schools".

I'm two weeks out before I finish my exams for this semester, so I'll get started on the first of July. If someone already has ideas, please let me know.

 

[Gila Guerilla]

D A R W I N :-

D.A.R.U.U.I.N.

Delere.....................Destroy

Auctorem................. the Author

Rerum.......................of Things

Ut Universum...........in order to

Infinitum.....................Understand

Nosca.........................the Infinite Universe

[Destroy the author of things, the infinite universe to understand]
___________________________________________________

Credit to: Dan Dennett "Darwin's Strange Inversion of Reasoning"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvOEpmZHA1s

(about the 66 minute mark)

N.B. There's no letter 'W', in Latin

 

[Gila Guerilla]

Evolution:-

Emergence Of Viable Life Under Tiny Increments Of Nature

Egress Of Vivacious Life Upon Transmogrifying Influence Of Nomogeny

DNA:-

Derived Natural Attribute

 

[Inferno]

As promised, I started this project a few weeks ago. I'm mostly preoccupied with handing in late assignments, so it's going slow. Here's the first part, called "Science 101". I hope this works, so here's the
unfinished Prezi-presentation

and below is the
[showmore=Script]What is science?

Science can be described as the systematic pursuit of knowledge, at the basic level known as facts, and as much as possible of truth. This knowledge is then organized in the form of testable explanations and predictions, commonly known as hypotheses and theories. In a later episode, we'll explore the philosophical aspects of science, but for now we'll restrict ourselves to considering science the pursuit of knowledge in the natural world. If you're talking about the supernatural, you're not doing science.
Science used to mean the knowledge itself, but nowadays it usually means "the way to obtain knowledge". Science is a path with very strict rules and if you don't follow them, you're either doing science badly or you're not doing it at all.
The difficulties in understanding and doing science are plenty:
1) There is a very strict language involved, commonly known as scientific terminology. If a scientist says something, be very careful what language he's using, because the words might mean something completely different than what you're used to. We'll get to that a little later.
2) Science is strict and doesn't care about your opinions. It doesn't matter how much you or a scientist would like something to be true, it can be the exact opposite of what you're hoping for. Science is impartial, you don't get to assume your preferred conclusion and run with it but you must instead back up those assumptions and conclusions by mountains of evidence, something we're not really used to.
3) Science is vast, ever growing and scary. Just to keep up with the information of one sub-field, for example micro-biology, you have to earn a degree that takes at least five years at a university and you will have to keep up with the expanding knowledge, something that would take every waking second of your free time. But that's just one sub-field, ignoring the many other fields in biology like cell biology, anthropology, genetics, molecular biology, ecology, palaeontology, zoology and botany, to name just a few. No human being can ever be an expert in all of these, let alone in all of science. This can be frightening and confusing to outsiders.

This begs the questions: Then why do we do science?
And the answer is simple. We do science because it's the only way we know of to obtain knowledge. Science is responsible for absolutely everything you have around you: Your computer, your mobile phone, your table, your shower, your car, even your food is owed to science. Think about the implications next time you call your friends from overseas.
Science is beautiful, it grants you insight into nature you would otherwise never have. I'll leave it at that for the moment and save it for a later video.

How do you do science?

Now that I've gotten you interested in science, you're hopefully breaking out your white lab suits, Bunsen burners and want to head straight for the next lab. But wait, we're not even close to that yet. How do you do science, anyway?
As I've said before, science and scientists adhere to very strict rules, so let's look at a quick overview of those.
The first rule is: Everything you do must be repeatable. The easiest way to do this is by documenting everything. And I mean absolutely everything! You're using dish washer soap to wash your test tubes? Well aside from that being a stupid idea, document it. You're cutting up flies with a scalpel? Document it. You're using litmus to tell the acidity of your vinegar? Cool idea, so document it already.
And why do you document? So that later on, other scientists can replicate your work and see if and where you went wrong.
The second step: Be rigorous. If you're not absolutely pedantic and accurate, you're going to screw up your results.
And then, the scientific method comes into play. You start out by either observing something or by asking a question. When you observe something strange, you usually also ask a question, for example "Why is that apple always falling to the ground?". When you've asked your question (and documented it), you don't simply go and look for an answer but you actually look in a library first. Maybe someone, somewhere already has a clue as to what's going on. Maybe that person left the work unfinished and you can pick up where they left off. And if there really is absolutely nothing to go on... well, all the better. Wait, not "tough luck"? No, all the better. You may be in the process of finding a completely new field of study! How awesome is that?
So once you've asked your question, you can form a hypothesis. Hypotheses are usually formed as sentences that can be answered, because you want to know if your hypothesis is correct or false. To make it easy, you can phrase your hypothesis as an "if... then" sentence. Staying with Newton, you could say "If I let go of an apple, it will always float upwards into the clouds." Document that question.
The next thing you will do is conduct an experiment. In this example, you take a large amount of apples, you let go and you document the results. You've taken 100 apples and let all of them go. What are the results, besides the fact that you'll be eating apple sauce for the next week? Well unless something spectacular happened, all of the 100 apples will, if left alone, have fallen to the ground. What a surprise. Now, what conclusions can we draw from that? Simple: Our hypothesis is false. So we go back to the drawing board, we come up with a different hypothesis, namely "If I let go of an apple, it will always fall to the ground". We do the experiment again and what do you know, our hypothesis has shown to be true. Now go and publish your hypothesis!

Who can be considered a scientists?

After years of study, you finally have your fancy Ph.D from Oxford. But does that make you a scientist? Well unless you're doing the above steps, it really doesn't mean anything. Having a Ph.D might mean you're more respected than someone who's not or that you're making more money, but it doesn't mean that you're doing good science.
For example, you can have a Ph.D in astronomy, but if you endorse astrology, you're not doing science correctly. Or to take an actual, well known example: Dr. Brian Josephson has a Ph.D and even got a Nobel Prize in 1973, so he must be an excellent scientist. On the other hand he endorses homeopathy, so there's clearly something wrong with his science there.
The fact is that we're all scientists, as long as we adhere to the scientific method. Some may be more professional scientists than others, but we can all be scientists. Children especially are extraordinary scientists, very curious and engaging... until they enter school.
So a few tips to remember for being a scientist: If you've never said "oh that's interesting", "well that was a waste of time" or "damn, I was wrong", then you're not a scientist. If you're not making mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct the mistakes, you're doing it really wrong. And if you can't accept that you're mistaken, then you're not doing it at all.
To quote Richard Dawkins: "Science is interesting. And if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

Why is science worth doing?

Now as I've said before, science achieves so incredibly much, you can't list half of its achievements in a day, probably not even a year. But apart from the objects science bestows on us, what else is it good for?
Well for one, it liberates us. How can you make an informed decision if you don't know the facts? If there's no science then there's no knowledge, no truth and in turn no democracy, because some group will claim absolute or divine knowledge, take power and suppress everyone else.
Second, you can understand the world better by doing science. That on its own might not convince you, but we can make it a better and more beautiful place that way.

And third, science is fun. It really is. Just watch the MythBusters and then think about doing that yourself. How. Cool. Is. THAT!
There are plenty more reasons than just that, but these are the main ones.

In the next two? videos, we'll discuss philosophical aspects of science and tackle the bullshit statement like "science makes everything boring".[/showmore]

Right at the end, I state that I will make it into videos. This might happen or it might not.
In any case, I decided to start with an intro to science because so many creationists don't even have a rudimentary grasp of it.
I haven't yet added any pictures to the Prezi and I'm not yet content with the script, I'm sure it needs a lot of work. Criticize me as harshly as you can, attack my ideas as viciously as possible please.

 

[Laurens]

Sorry to nitpick, but I think I'm right in saying that Dawkins was actually quoting someone else when he said this:

To quote Richard Dawkins: "Science is interesting. And if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

I might be mistaken, and I'm not sure who he was quoting, but perhaps someone would like to clarify?

 

[Inferno]

Sorry to nitpick, but I think I'm right in saying that Dawkins was actually quoting someone else when he said this:

To quote Richard Dawkins: "Science is interesting. And if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

I might be mistaken, and I'm not sure who he was quoting, but perhaps someone would like to clarify?

True, my bad. "A former and highly successful editor of "New Scientist Magazine" - who actually built up "New Scientist" to great new heights - was asked "What is your philosophy at "New Scientist"?" and he said "Science is interesting. And if you don't agree, you can fuck off."

TY for the nit-pick.