A Fate Worse Than Death

In a previous post, I may have come across as dissing Dobzhansky. This is not the case at all. I have utmost respect for the man and his often unappreciated sense of humor. For instance, check out this gem from the paper entitled, "Indeterminate Outcome of Certain Experiments on Drosophila Populations":

"It can be seen in figure 3 that most of the lines intersect at values of W1 between 0.25 and 0.50, and at values of W2 between 0.85 and 0.95. These variations are well within the limits of sampling errors. Only the lines F, G, and H intersect at values of W1 below 0, which is biologically impossible, since a negative W would mean that carriers of a certain genotype would suffer a fate worse than death."

This reminds me of The Princess Bride when Westley was "MOSTLY dead."