Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays) with LiveCode fun!

[Jacques Hausser]

Many thanks, Jeffrey. I was really pleased to look at your code. A good demonstration of the power of natural selection !

I did something similar some years ago, a little standalone for my students I called "Weasel", but your code is better organised, more elegant, and it's some sex in it (my "animals" were haploids and had asexual reproduction like bacteria). Why "Weasel" ? It stems from Richard Dawkins'  "the blind watchmaker" (1986). Quotation:

"I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?" 

I had the pleasure to hear Dawkins demonstrating his version of the algorithm at the CERN, Geneva.

Merry Christmas and happy new year

Jacques

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Prof. Jacques Hausser
Department of Ecology and Evolution
Biophore / Sorge
University of Lausanne
CH 1015 Lausanne
please use my private address:
6 route de Burtigny
CH-1269 Bassins
tel/fax: 	++ 41 22 366 19 40
mobile:	++ 41 79 757 05 24
E-Mail:	jacques.hausser at unil.ch
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