This will be another example of Joseph's ability to pull disparate threads into a unified (to him) whole. Our texts for today come from - CameraGuy's sending me RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy
- Predation Risk Affects Reproductive Physiology and Demography of Elk in the journal Science and
- this quote from Jennalee Ryan, head of 'embryo brokerage' the Abraham Center of Life, "which offers test-tube embryos created from attractive and intelligent egg and sperm donors, and which is being investigated by US officials."
She said, "Who wants an ugly, stupid kid? I mean, come on." as noted in the journal Nature's Designer Babies
There were some "...it's about time somebody did this" type grunts when CameraGuy's offering wound its way through the NextStage offices.
No offense, and I honestly don't expect anyone outside of those who work with me daily to follow me on this. Instead, I'll just invite you to sit back and enjoy the ride, a case of look where I'm pointing and not at my finger.
The common thread to these three pieces is a demonstration of how groups adapt to adversity in order to defend themselves against "predation". In the first the model is company as predator, client as prey and money is the exchange. But the predator gains nothing by consuming the prey in this scenario. In fact, if the predator annihilates its prey then the predator won't survive, therefore the predator has a vested interest in keeping the prey healthy, available and...uh...unaware they are prey. It's more like vampirism as depicted in the Blade movies. Vampires exist, most people don't know it and the vampires will only thrive so long as enough people don't know it to provide the vampires with enough human cattle to keep them going.For that matter, the interaction between humans and domesticated animals is pretty much the same.
The second is the traditional concept of predator, prey and their management. It's the model that is most familiar to everyone who thinks of such things.
The last is a model of social predation and the prey recognizing it doesn't want to be prey, therefore forcing itself to evolve so that it becomes "the" if not "a" predator. If anyone doubts that people recognized as attractive in a given culture have a leg up in succeeding within that culture, start with Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty. Let me know when you're done and we'll go from there. Adaptations that provide survival value -- regardless of how they come about -- are evolution in action.
What ties this thread around these three disparate elements is our (humans, as far as I know) ability to look for markers of coming change or at least recognize them when they're here (and hopefully not once they're past and it's too late to respond, leaving us only able to ride along...kind of like the explanation of this thread, yes?).
It's easy to see the markers and recognize them as such -- social elements and utility (increasing my worth with the tribe) -- knowing when they'll take effect and act is a completely different thing. When does the predator-prey balance shift and roles reverse? Mammals were the predominate prey species millions of years ago and now we contain the dominant species on the planet.
The problem is that we -- humans -- are one of the few species that has predators that prey on its own species. Some of the predation is the killing kind, some is the vampiric kind.
When the markers arrive and regardless if they're recognized, would you rather be dead or have the life slowly sucked out of you? For that matter, would you rather have a gun or a straw?
Upcoming Trainings:
Upcoming Conferences:- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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