Yesterday's game between Corporate and Charles Darwin was a battle between free market capitalism and the greatest naturalist of all time. The Corporate team is loaded with the world's top pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Darwin is the author of important works such as On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. To find out who came out on top, click through below the fold.
Everyone expected Darwin to start out with a heavy dose of the Origin. And if he didn't come heavy with that, he'd bring The Descent of Man. But Chuck use neither in the opening minutes of the game, instead opting to bust out his knowledge of barnacles. Prepared to drift against Darwin's selection, Corporate was not ready for an early barnacle onslaught. Darwin unleashed descriptions of barnacle larval stages and anatomical structures homologous to other crustaceans.
It didn't take very long for Corporate to gain their composure, but they had dug themselves into an early hole. Even though they knew how Darwin was attacking them, they struggled to field a good defense. Dow Chemicals attempted to develop an anti-cirriped treatment, but it was rejected by the EPA on the grounds that turned the water green and caused fish to grow a third eye. Corporate was forced to call a timeout to reanalyze their game plan.
Big business came out of the break revitalized. They isolated a chemical from gooseneck barnacles that treats some cases of rickets, a common disease in Victorian England. Of course, they patented the high volume synthesis on the spot. That scored Corporate some points, but Darwin had moved on from barnacles by then. He spent the rest of the first half describing coral atolls. Corporate struggled with the ecology and geography of these island reefs, and they couldn't make up much ground on Darwin.
As the teams came onto the court for the second half, Corporate looked reinvigorated. Despite trailing by double figures, they charged out of the gate with one goal in mind: buy the rights to everything Darwin had ever written. Too bad it's all in the public domain. And most of it is available for free online. Darwin took advantage of this feux paux to unleash his greatest weapon: evolution by natural selection.
After being weakened by Darwin's first half surprises -- barnacles and atolls -- Corporate crumbled under the pressure of the grand unifying theory of biology. To add insult to injury, Darwin brought along Charles Lyell and Alfred Russel Wallace; the onslaught was too much for the Corporate squad. Darwin's fifteen point halftime lead quickly grew to twenty, then thirty. And then, on back to back possessions, Darwin and friends went strong to the hoop with pigeon breeding and artificial selection. That was followed by yet another Corporate turnover (one of their 26 on the day), which led to a fast break in which Lyell laid out the fundamentals of uniformitarianism. That gave Darwin a 41 point lead.
Corporate managed to stage a couple small comebacks with some crafty direct to consumer marketing. But there was no way they could make up the monumental deficit. Darwin won in a landslide, 137-76.
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Yeah! Darwin! All the way!
If Darwin wins the entire tournament, creationists will fill their pants....
yes yes yes yes...thank goodness sometimes, just sometimes, good prevails over evil. but, as with an earlier round, did Darwin thank the lord after the victory?
I have one word for that:
Boo-yah!
Maybe that's two words. Who cares? Go Darwin!