See the cat? See the cradle?

There are a finite number of symbols we accept as letters, and from those, a finite number of combinations we accept as words. Grammar aside, I'm continually amazed by the various orders these words turn up in, and will log my favorite quotes that I encounter here.

Jul 1, 2009 3:28pm

Prey

“Most people imagined evolution to be a one-time-only process, a confluence of chance events. If plants hadn’t started making oxygen, animal life would never have evolved. If an asteroid hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs, mammals would never have taken over. If some fish hadn’t come onto land, we’d all still be in the water. And so on.

All that was true enough, but there was another side of evolution, too. Certain forms, and certain ways of life, kept appearing again and again. For example, parasitism-one animal living off another-had evolved independently many times in the course of evolution. Parasitism was a reliable way for life-forms to interact; and it kept reemerging.”

-Michael Crichton

Page 1 of 1