WSJ Blog: Darwin’s Birthday Celebration on Facebook

[Synnical]

No surprises here since Murdock bought the Editorial Page of the WSJ. He has to maintain the business news, but lookee what fun is to be had here!

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/02/12/darwins-birthday-celebration-on-facebook/

What good is social networking if not to make easier the convening of such odd collections of people such as fans of actor Neil Patrick Harris or people who really, really like lasagna and would like to express this online with others who feel the same way?

Case in point: a new Facebook group to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday. The group’s goal is to acquire 200,000 users by February 12, the birth date of the father of evolutionary theory, and is also organizing a free phone seminar with 10 of the world’s leading biologists in which group members can dial in and participate. With 2,000 wall posts, the group has grown exponentially from just 559 members on January 29 to nearly 200,000 on February 11.

So why a Facebook group honoring Charles Darwin’s birthday? Why not? “We are volunteers here to show respect and wish happy birthday to one of the greatest scientists,” wrote one of the group administrators on the site. “Everyone is welcome to join - Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, etc. Attacks on Darwin - or religion - are not welcome. This is a forum for paying tribute to a great scientist NOT for religious debate.”

The group also maintains a Web site outside of Facebook (aptly named Happybirthdaycharlesdarwin.com), which makes the interesting case for human evolution and a disinterest in football–apparently, the number of users registering for the Darwin birthday group on Facebook spiked during key moments of the recent Superbowl game, such as when the Steelers made their first score on a field goal, but then plummeted during commercial breaks. (Whether a desire to watch Budweiser commercials is an adaptable trait in humans or whether Darwinists are just a bunch of geeks who don’t care much for contact sports isn’t necessarily clear.)

And while the debate over teaching Darwinism versus intelligent design in schools has hardly been resolved, with less than 40 percent of Americans actually believing in the theory of evolution (and another 36 percent lacking an opinion either way), a Facebook group in Darwin’s honor with members numbering in the hundreds of thousands might, if nothing else, say something about social networking and genetic fitness. Computer geeks, rejoice that your excessive Facebooking habits could actually be a trait that is genetically adaptive–and perhaps more so if you mate with other Facebookers.