The Wessex Scene Bruno Bonus: Woke Thoughts at 3AM

Someone needs to give The Wessex Scene a reality check. I've featured a number of their articles on this blog, but as sure as Southampton University dropping places in the league tables The Wessex Scene is always willing to print any old shit. Here we have a quick taste of their completely pointless shit from our good old friend Bruno Russell. We've previously featured Bruno's nonsense, but it seems he's still blurting out his worthless opinion on subjects he doesn't understand in the name of student journalism. I'll only call Bruno a moron in moderation here, as it's clear this is not a serious piece exploring complex subjects, and if I go too hard he'll threaten legal action. This article is, however, a great illustration of why you shouldn't post any old shit on the internet, no matter how desperate you are for content. Remember, this shit got published.
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https://www.wessexscene.co.uk/opinion/2017/11/19/woke-thoughts-at-3am-what-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg/
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Isn't it nice seeing Bruno tackling such crucial questions? I'm not saying this is a step down from his previous articles, but his next venture is probably going to be debating whether the latest Sia album is great or fantastic. It should be noted that neither of these writers has any background in biology, or even science in general, so I don't know why a student publication would end up taking woke thoughts from this lot. Are the Southampton science faculties illiterate or something? This isn't a problem for our Bruno, as he's decided to get his woke thoughts from the street. I don't know if asking people on the street at 3am is the best method to get reliable information, but surely Bruno wouldn't be using uninformed opinions to bulk up this pointless article.

Hang on a minute, Bruno's been interviewing people outside a Hull Job Centre. Surely even Southampton students possess at least one more brain cell than these clinical morons. This is surely enough evidence to put the royal charter that gave Southampton university status on a bonfire. Never have I seen such a classic example of idiots feeling they need to share their opinion just because they can. And yes Bruno, I'm looking at you.

The first response actually sounds perfectly reasonable. It may be completely wrong, but at least they're concise and get to point. Obviously, this is not a quote from Bruno, although maybe this individual could act as a ghostwriter for Bruno's next Wessex Scene article so as to ensure we get the same level of shit, but it's shit that takes up less of your life to laugh at. It's quite easy to pick this argument apart considering chickens are not the only animals that lay eggs, with many examples of egg-laying organisms throughout the fossil record that predate chickens. We'll get to these examples later in the article.

Not content with one incorrect statement the article then gives us a double dose of idiocy. How the second quote was allowed to be published is beyond my comprehension. There's so much wrong in that one sentence it's simultaneously filling me with rage and making me howl with laughter. This is the worst attempt at someone attempting to be an academic since the last Bruno Russell article I read. I suppose we have to start with the big flaw. It should be common knowledge, but apparently some students are unaware that a chicken is not a fucking mammal. I shouldn't even have to source that simple fact. This fucking idiot then claims that chickens are the closest related birds to dinosaurs, which is obviously complete bullshit considering they've been domesticated from an extant species. The reality is that phylogenies are constantly changing with new evidence, and without complex genomic data it's simply not possible to accurately claim chickens are the closest relatives of dinosaurs, which is a very complex clade of reptiles in itself. The first wild chickens arose around 3 million years ago, whereas birds as a clade diverged from reptiles almost 100 million years before the arrival of chickens. That's a lot of time even in evolutionary terms, and certainly enough time for different breeding mechanisms to evolve. Needless to say chickens did not evolve from mammals, and if anything the inverse scenario is more likely. Mammals and birds diverged separately on the phylogenetic tree, and you have to go back 180 million years to find their most recent common ancestor.

I can assure you that the crap spewed out by this simpleton certainly isn't evolutionary biology. Furthermore, I don't know why this false scenario would mean the chicken must come before the egg, because we know for a fact that dinosaurs laid eggs, so why wouldn't this logic lead you to conclude the egg came first? I don't know what the fuck is going on, but this isn't scientific reasoning. My worry is how bad the other comments must have been to not get included in this shitshow. If that level of stupidity wasn't edited out then what was? Come to think of it why wasn't this article cut from publishing?

Oh Bruno, Bruno, Bruno. Please, I implore you, just stick to the arts. You are correct to say that speciation occurs in gradual steps, and that categorising species is often subject to debate, but that doesn't mean the process is 'vague'. As we're dissecting this argument on an evolutionary timescale we can clearly identify distinct phylogenetic changes from one clade of organisms to another. With both genetic and morphological data we can accurately draw distinct lines between the chicken and its ancestor, and without these lines taxonomy would be full of people like you muddying the waters with your philosophical crap. We're describing gradual evolutionary changes over potentially millions of years, and not one competent evolutionary biologist would stand by this reductionist view of evolution. 'Bruno Biology' on the other hand is full of irrelevant questions like 'is there a moment a human becomes a human?'  Can you just fuck off with this philosophical crap for once in your life? If two humans reproduce then a human will be born in the next generation, not a fucking swan. Over time humans may start to reproductively diverge for a whole host of reasons, and then we start to see the process of speciation occurring quite clearly. There's a clear lack of knowledge towards evolutionary processes here, so let's stop with these mental gymnastics.

We can simply explain this quandary by imagining an ancestor of a chicken evolving a method to produce eggs over many generations, with these organisms eventually evolving into the modern day chicken. The concept of a species doesn't actually factor into this response, we're merely examining the evolutionary changes across generations. It's that simple. We don't need Bruno to concoct this monstrosity of a response because it manages to needlessly complicate an issue with a fuckload of irrelevant jargon. It barely answers the fucking question, and I get the impression this was merely a response for Bruno to massage his own ego so we can all gaze in wonder at this amazing solution to an age-old problem. Shocking how a response this revolutionary has only managed to scrape the barrel at the world's shittest publication.

Ten bucks on Bruno having fuck all to do with this response. This response actually answers the question, it's succinct, and keeps to the point. It's still a terrible response, but at least I don't have to crack The Davinci Code to understand the main argument. Again, this is clearly not a response from a person who knows the area, and there are a number of inaccuracies to note. For starters species don't breed with eggs, rather sexual reproduction stimulates the fertilisation of eggs. An important distinction, but mainly just an issue with syntax. Similarly there's also the problem that the third paragraph isn't even written in clear English, which lowers my already terrible opinion of the editing team at The Wessex Scene. However, these are minor flaws when compared to the scientific ignorance on display.

The big issue is once again the clear lack of understanding about evolution, or 'the Bruno response' as it's most commonly known. It's simply not enough evidence to stick pins in evolutionary events and view the process of evolution as some linear event. For all we know chickens could have evolved to reproduce without eggs and over time evolved their own specialised egg. That scenario is not at all likely, but it is possible that a suppressed gene may suddenly mutate, highlighting the idea that evolution is not merely acquiring characteristics on a chronological timeline.

The bad news for Bruno is that this question has already been answered. We've already seen evidence that the egg preceded the chicken, and considering chickens were domesticated mere thousands of years ago it's a stretch to assume that chickens have undergone huge evolutionary changes in their breeding mechanisms. Bruno simply has no evidence to suggest the contrary. I'm sure these facts won't shut him up, but I do think it's important to hammer into his thick skull that this amateur analysis is of no use to anyone. You may think you're an expert in philosophy, but that doesn't mean that expertise translates into subjects that you clearly have no background in. I know The Wessex Scene don't have the balls to tell you this, but please stop writing uninformed shit that you think passes as journalism. That's a jab at The Wessex Scene as well. Stop publishing any old shit. You start to get the feeling the shredder at The Wessex Scene is cocooned in cobwebs by this point. This article should have been thrown straight in the bin. It's a fucking joke.