Tuesday, February 17, 2004|
Even MORE reason to be a Republican For Edwards!. Well at least this way, if Kerry gets the nomination, Glenn and I won't have to be single issue voters. We can vote for the candidate who's for national security AND gun owners' rights! |
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An interesting post on the demography of several major Asian countries as wella s our own. I too like the demographic state that America finds itself. We value intelligence and ability over race and sex. We look for value wherever we can find it, not just in state sponsored or historical avenues. We are not afraid to quickly and effectively punish our enemies. I'm a big fan of America. A great deal of my thinking tends to stem from my belief that our evolutionary history shapes many of the decisions we make today. So I look at the projected demographics of places like China and India and wonder what that means for the evolutionary future of the species. When countries like those have either a cultural or political proclivity towards a particular sex, in this case males, I think it causes an evolutionary drag on the species. Here's why. The most important thing is that genetic diversity of the species goes down. In the extreme case, we have an overabundance of males and a very small number of females. Because the primate female tends to only have one child and has a long period of gestation as well as a great deal of time to invest in the upbringing of the child, small numbers of females means small numbers of offspring. This necessarily limits the genetic diversity of the species. While the percentages in China, and to a lesser degree India (see the comments on the link above-there seems to be a turnaround in parts of India where females are no longer unwanted), may not be terribly drastic, even if we have 55-45 or 60-40 males to females, we are greatly lowering the genetic diversity because many males towards the bottom of the "matability" scale will never procreate. This has to have a detrimental effect on the long term success of our evolutionary descendants. The post above talks briefly about a possible scenario where 15% of Chinese males are unable to marry and concludes this will be a problem. However, this is only a cultural problem and not an evolutionary one as marriage is a human construct. It's highly unlikely, excepting strong cultural pressures, that those 15% will never MATE and that is probably the key to keeping the testosterone fueled madman in check. Well maybe not, but bear with me. Even if a society has a 15% male population who never marries, it doesn't necessarily mean disaster on an evolutionary scale, as it is fairly well studied that a certain percentage of children have a biological father different from the one they live with. In this scenario, genetic diversity might actually go up, assuming the 15% or whatever are actually attractive mating possibilities which may or may not be true in a Communist culture. Overall, I think a society that actively tries to alter the ratio of males to females towards the male end of the spectrum is most likely negatively effecting their evolutionary prospects by limiting genetic diversity. A discussion for the opposite (i.e the Amazons) is left for another day. |
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I'm definitely in for this one. 9:36:59 PM  What do you think? [] trackback []
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So far, I'm less than impressed with the "Category" function in Radio. First of all, it's not easy to set up. Second of all, I'm posting this to the category "Random" but I don't think there will be notification of that in the post. Third item up for bid, the themes you choose in Radio for your Categories do not match the one of the home site, even if you pick that as the template. So I have a completely different blogroll for my category pages than I do for the home page. To change that (though it hasn't taken effect yet that I can see), I had to go to the individual #homeTemplate documents on my hard drive and paste in the code from my main #homeTemplate page. That defeats the very purpose of a content management system, i.e. change in one place and have it propagate throughout the site. I could go on but I have other things to do. Right now, I'm really starting to think about migrating to CityDesk in the summer when my Radio license is up. |
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Andrew Sullivan's excellent critique of Kerry responding to questions in the Wisconsin debate. I really still have hope that we'll see Edwards make a strong showing today in Wisconsin. I hope that Dean gets the hell out of the way. But I don't see that happening. If, God forbid, Kerry is the candidate in the fall, he has NO chance of getting my vote because of performances like this. 8:05:13 PM What do you think? [] trackback []
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I'm playing around with catagories for my posts. Not sure that I really post enough to make that worth while but the organization of the posts is attractive to me. If you (and that's the singular form because I think that's about all that reads this thing) like it or dislike it, let me know. Or don't. I don't really care that much. GOD PLEASE SAY SOMETHING, I NEED YOUR APPROVAL! Ok I'm done. |
Last update: 7/14/2004; 8:01:25 AM .
