The Blogville Darwin-lite Award Competition

Bouncing Bertie Boffin here. Blogville's Chief Scientific Advisor. It's been too long.

Now I expect many of you have heard of 'The Darwin Awards', which each year honour the human being who has brought about the greatest improvement to the gene pool by eliminating him or herself in the most unusual and unintelligent fashion. (It's usually a him, obviously).

Well us pups hardly need reminding that the evidence for the humans being the most highly evolved species is, well, specious at best. You'll know this, for sure, simply by observing the people with whom you live.

So I have decided to run my own competition, which I am naming the 'Blogville Darwin-lite Award'. It is 'lite' because I am most certainly not looking for stories involving an actual fatality. Rather, I would like  to hear about occasions when your human has acted in a way that can be taken as proof positive against the notion of 'intelligent design'.

Since Gail has decreed that I am banned from entering the contest, I won't bother telling you again about the time she decided to 'calm me down' by squirting Rescue Remedy up my nose on a crowded platform at Aberdeen railway station...

A very special prize will be awarded to the best entry, and the judgement will be made according to a set of rules too complex and abstruse for any human to understand.

To enter, please leave a comment on this post, either (1) describing the episode in sufficient detail for the incredible stupidity of the human involved to be plain for all to see, or (2) referencing an explanatory post on your own blog.

The deadline for entries will be 30th June, and the winner announced on 2nd July, together with an in depth scientific analysis of course...

PS If you write an entry on your own blog, please use the image at the top of this post to indicate your participation in the contest, and include the words 'Darwin-lite' somewhere in the title. You can post any time up to the deadline. Please also feel free to link to the 'blog hop' below. (And a big thank you to  Oz the Terrier for setting it up.)

Distractingly Sexy Science?

Attentive readers may have noticed that there have not been many Bouncing Bertie Boffin posts recently. In fact, some might have concluded I have rather lost interest in scientific matters. Please be reassured that this could not be further from the truth!

However, I will admit I have of late been been remiss in my duties as Scientific Advisor to Blogville, and a news story this week suggests a reason for this.

It is - I kid you not - because I have the misfortune to share my life with a female scientist (albeit one of a different species).

Yes really! It totally must be true because the very famous Nobel prize winner Tim Hunt has said as much. More precisely, this professor of biochemistry from University College London, one of our most elite institutions of Higher Education, opined a few days ago that male scientists should not work alongside female scientists because the latter are a distraction. To quote Prof Hunt verbatim: "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab …You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry."

So that must be it. Therein lies my productivity gap. As for sure I love Gail and she loves me. And it is true too that she dislikes being criticised although I will concede her reaction does not normally involve tears, at least not that I have noticed.

Oh. And now Gail is criticising me for writing "utter twaddle".

She also tells me that female scientists are using 'Twitter' to take humorous revenge on the hapless Mr Hunt by posting distinctly unalluring photos of themselves conducting their lab or fieldwork under the hashtag #distractinglysexy.

Hmmm. So Gail has gone upstairs in search of a photo from one of her old albums, to contribute to the 'debate'.

Meanwhile, I shall try to focus my thoughts on some new science posts to sex up your summer...