Once upon a time there was a mother with two daughters and a son. The girls liked to tease their little brother, telling him (among other things) that he was an 'accident'. Not knowing exactly what that meant, he asked his mother, "Was I an accident?"
She replied, "I prefer to think of you as a surprise."
"What's the difference?" he asked.
"Well, an accident is something bad and you don't want it to happen. A surprise is something good and you didn't even know you wanted it until you got it."
(credit to Roseanne Barr)
In evolution, a random mutation could be a fatal accident or it could be a happy surprise. There's no way of knowing until it's tested in the laboratory of natural selection.
"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"
™ Version 4.2
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