The abiolution of evogenesis

Semi-bulimic 'Tubby' Evans, has a new job as an eating dog for the anorexic, following a successful anti-discrimination appeal to the European court of canine rights. In a landmark ruling, the court upheld his claim to lupine concestry, by 12 barks to 3, declaring Tubby to be 'dog in all but form and function'. The plaintiff has asked for 13 million other species to be taken into consideration.

REJ:- Wel Duw, duw, there you have it, isn't it? A forty page pull-out on the rygby Cwpan y Byd. Yes. Shane 'magic daps' Williams. Wel, I've put down my Western Mail, and am gazing out of the window like a tired goat -

*slam!*

REJ:- Aha! That sound most surely heralds the departure of my little nestoffireants. Sioned is off to her co-dependency cure group. She has to go once a week, and do what they say, or she'll be cured. Yes. But everyone should have a hobby - keeps the mice down. Now today we have Dr. A.G.Cairns-Smith to present an obsolete solution to a non-question. I don't know why either. I do know how though. He's going to use his mouth, preadaptated for ingestion, but which now does words too. Dr. A.G. Cairns-Smith! Croeso i -

Dr.AGCS:- Llanfihangel-y-Creuddun. Yes. Some beginnings are more obvious than others -

REJ:- Wel, I've no idea what that meant, but let's go back in time now -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh goody! -

REJ:- Yes, people like that sort of thing - so let's go back in time to before your quantum consciousness fluff book, to when you were a genius. -

Dr.AGCS:- Oh, lets go a bit further.

REJ:- Take me all the way bigboy! -

Dr.AGCS:- Well I might stop at physics -

REJ:- Thank fuck for that. You've got to leave a little bit of magic. Not a lot! ahaha. That was my Paul Daniels. Actually....I don't want him. You have him -

Dr.AGCS:- ? -

REJ:- I'd play Mike Phillips for the Springbok game. He's a nasty -

Dr.AGCS:- At some point you're going to have to pretend to be interested, or it won't work -

REJ:- Professor Smithcairns! I have always wondered, which came first? the chicken or the egg? Yes. Ever since I saw 'Chicken run'. I was quite surprised to learn chickens couldn't fly too - the premise of the film. Perhaps it was intended for an urban audience -

Dr.AGCS:- Speciation was solved in 1859. But keep it as a short-cut cliche to mean a paradox if you like -

REJ:- Ok I will. What was the next thing I was pretending to find important? -

Dr.AGCS:- Well, the origin of life you dimwit. The first cell - that sort of thing -

REJ:- But Dr.Venternstein already makes better life from non-life. And the big G couldn't make a book. It's a mismatch. Like Shane Williams against Brian Habana -

Dr.AGCS:- It is the greatest mystery of all time. After time -

REJ:- Wel, you feed me my lines then and I'll type them out while secretly thinking of the rygby -

Dr.AGCS:- *scribble!.....rustle!* -

REJ:- .....AGCTTGCAACTGCGTAGCTAGGACAGTCGATUAGCTAG......?!

Dr.AGCS:- Hang on, you need this transcriptor...

REJ:- er...

Dr.AGCS:- I've made it out of 1cm beads, each representing -

REJ:- Just say it's complicated -

Dr.AGCS:- And it's gone three times round your village -

REJ:- It's a town! - the oldest in mid-Wales, the gateway to the -

Dr.AGCS:- But that's not all you'll need. You'll also need this read/write machinery, a chemobio industrial complex, an enterprize zone estatesworth of factories, a -

REJ:- You're using more letters than is necessary -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh! Good one. I'll just say it's complicated then. And all the size of very small compared to very larger things. But that wasn't the main point -

REJ:- Of course not. Er...

Dr.AGCS:- The main point was, and is, that the system is interdependent. And so we have a paradox, like the -

REJ:- Like the goose and the egg! And the non-flying chickens. They must be good at climbing trees. Wel, now I am interested. Because Stephen Jones is injured, and Priestland has been playing very well -

Dr.AGCS:- And the only way to get a highly complex interdependent system is by evolution -

REJ:- Hook could play fullback -

Dr.AGCS:- Shame about Henson -

REJ:- Yes, I'll never know what he saw in that nymphomaniac multi-millionairess -

Dr.AGCS:- You say 'Evolution appears to require a lot of complex interdependent machinery, that could only have evolved, what is the least amount of machinery required for evolution?, none would be good' -

REJ:- Evolution appears to require a lot of complex interdependent machinery, that could only have evolved, what is the least amount of machinery required for evolution?, none would be good -

Dr.AGCS:- I'm glad you asked that question, Richard. The answer's none. -

REJ:- But you said -

Dr.AGCS:- Can I say 'naked' without you doing some puerile 'joke'? -

REJ:- Life is a gamble -

Dr.AGCS:- I prefer 'naturally occurring machinery' -

REJ:- Wel, if you can just make up your definitions -

Dr.AGCS:- The word was made up rather later. Before we knew approximately all life is invisible. By species, by biomass, by -

REJ:- By thunder hurry up I'm getting bored again -

Dr.AGCS:- It's rather difficult to draw a line in the soup. In fact it's silly - nothing particularly lifey either side of any line then -

REJ:- You're just miffed the 'impossible' molecules-of-life fall out of the sky on a regular basis. Like space croutons -

Dr.AGCS:- Parable of the Sower -

REJ:- Some fell on stony ground -

Dr.AGCS:- I can go pre-soup. Before the traditional starter. Just because the likelier answer is easypeasylemonsqueezy doesn't make mine not fantabulous. And much cleverer - I solved a harder problem than there was -

REJ:- You couldn't get simpler -

Dr.AGCS:- Naked genes. -

REJ:- *wince!* -

Dr.AGCS:- You're meant to say 'What's a naked gene?' -

REJ:- What's a...*Gnnnnrrrr!* I can't do it -

Dr.AGCS:- It will get better with time -

REJ:- Been forty years -

Dr.AGCS:- A naked gene is a gene with no separate phenotype. The phenotype is intrinsic to the structure. Thus replication, heredity, - evolution - requires no machinery at all...-

REJ:- And there is such a thing? -

Dr.AGCS:- Oooh heaps - a worldful. Have a look -

REJ:- You're not expecting anyone to read 'Genetic takeover' surely? -

Dr.AGCS:- ...mutation, adaptation, exaption - all intrinsic to the -

REJ:- There you are - you can make up words fine. But you had to choose -

Dr.AGCS:- Surely Hooky for outside-half.