

My Darwinian Daughters - davi
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/07/13/from-the-vault-my-darwinian-daughters/

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btilly
Mostly good. But there is one thing I doubted.

 _Mothers, for example, seem to slow down the growth of their babies in the
womb. As a result, the average baby is not born at the optimal weight for
avoiding an early death. It’s a little on the light side. Only an evolutionary
tug of war can explain that gap._

I would say that the more obvious evolutionary tug of war is between viability
after birth and odds of surviving childbirth. Remember, over recent
evolutionary time, childbirth was a rather dangerous affair. Furthermore
related species with smaller heads have larger babies.

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cpr
I love how these "just-so stories" involving evolution treat it as a magical,
omnipotent, "blind watchmaker". It's clearly a religious attitude, not a
scientific one.

