Re: Parasitic ants

[Russ Abbott]

I love it: http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/social-parasitism-in-ants-13256421

 

-- Russ Abbott
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  Professor, Computer Science
  California State University, Los Angeles

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On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen:

 

The thing that keeps puzzling me about your appeals here is the hidden assumption (I think I detect) that there is Somebody In Charge.  It’s the parasitic ant model.  There’s a species of ant that makes its living by its fertilized “queens” putting on perfumes and waving their little antenna until workers of another species pick them up and carry them to their queen, where upon the parasitic queen jumps on the back of the true queen, bites her in the back of the neck to terminate her egg laying, and then lays eggs which are cared for and raised by the parasitized ants.  Faculty members at universities are particularly prone to the Parasitic Ant Fallacy.  They think that  if they just go and complain to the President, The World Will Change.  It’s a harmless fantasy in its place, except that it leads to disparagement of the people who are actually trying to make change, and getting muck all over themselves in the process.  Viz Obama.  In short, I suspect you of being a closet royalist.  So there!

 

Nick

 

 

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 10:35 AM
To: [hidden email]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Please sign this thing! Eliminate the bi-annual time change caused by Daylight Savings Time

 

Sorry to bump, but now *another* DST fkup: Europe does not change DST when the US does.

 

So today our skype Italian class was shifted, and both Dede and I had to cancel scheduled events.

 

If we have to live with time changes, we should at least try to make it global, we're a pretty global community now and I bet others got hit by US/Euro/Worldwide differences.

 

   -- Owen

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