blivet radio
The Radio weblog of Hal Rager

Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Perhaps better titled 'Non-optimized as Designed' Interesting, though I don't agree with all his conclusions... America: Broken As Designed. "The most significant test of any system is how it handles unanticipated situations. A well-designed and implemented system is one which can continue to operate correctly (i.e. one which continues to embody its design principles and function according to its specifications) in a situation which was not considered in its creation. A system which does not must be considered flawed, either in design or implementation. While those of here who are scientists and engineers use this principle of evaluation daily in our work, it's likely that few of us (and probably even fewer in the general population) have applied this principle to the State(s) in which we live. Since the United States, in its current form, is over two hundred years old (and one of its designers, Thomas Jefferson himself, advocated such a review every twenty years), a public review of how well it has proceeded is long overdue." [kuro5hin.org] 6:55:49 PM    comment   trackback []

In Evolution Game, Survival Doesn't Equal Success; Finding Has Implications For Future Of Biodiversity "It's clear that there is a lot of evolutionary action in the aftermath of mass extinctions," said Jablonski [University of Chicago scientist David Jablonski--ed.]. "During the rebound from mass extinctions, it's not an all-or-nothing thing. The shape of the post-extinction world comes not only from who goes extinct, but from which survivors are successful [^] or, instead, become extinct or marginalized in the aftermath." (...)"Because most extinction event survivor organisms rebound so robustly, paleontological studies are generally focused on these evolutionary winners," explains Richard Lane, director of NSF's paleontology program. "Jablonski's research examines why other groups of organisms weakly struggle through these major catastrophic events only to meet their demise somewhat later, geologically speaking." To test the idea that many survivors go on to lose the evolutionary game, Jablonski turned to the paleontological literature and to his own work on the aftermath of mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era. In a global analysis of marine genera, he determined how many lineages survived each of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history only to die off within the first five or 10 million years thereafter." [Science Daily] 6:43:03 PM    comment   trackback []