Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm

Since I know nothing about genetics I can have the fun of making up theories all on my own. So here’s a little insta-theory

Let’s assume that genes give rise to traits; so for example you might have a gene for shy, or a gene or sociable, or gene for a strong immune systems. Now let’s assume that genes can migrate from one place in the genome to another. Now let’s assume that gene that are physically close to each other in the genome are more likely to be transmitted together while those far appart are more likely not to be transmitted to the next the generation.

Let’s say there is some advantage to having two traits at the same time. For example if you highly sociable then it might be good to have a strong immune system. Or alternately there is some disadvantages so for example if your shy you may not get much benefit from paying the expense of a strong immune system.

So, it seems reasonable that selection pressures would cause genes for particular traits to migrate into a physical ordering that sorts out the cost/benefits of their being inherited together.

I’m unhappy that this becomes a weak argument for prejudicial behavior.

Presentations - Nice advice from Doc. Searls on how to give presentations.

Presentations - Another nice set of advice on giving presentations, this is the one with the critical advise on happy babies. I feel it’s important to standardize on this baby picture, particularly since you can have him pointing at your bullet points.

Gaea’s Fart - Something else to worry about.

Aggregate Mood — at live journal.

Outsource, Peicework, Editting - Some price on the density of errors, some by amusing metaphor, some are serving self publishing authors, while others do ghost writing, a lot of these seem to be in england, but at least one is in India. I started looking at these from one I found via a banner ad. While, obviously I need one thesse; what I really wish for is a Moveable Type plug-in that let’s my readers volunteer edits to my postings.

In a somewhat cruel posting Ken Coar decides to share that he has forsythia blooming. I don’t have a picture of our fosythia; they are at the bottom of the driveway on the left, not really visible in the picture above.

The tread came off the snow blower. It won’t go back on, too much rust on the axle. I can’t remove the wheel.

Finally, something new to worry about! The earth is growing darker.

It is conventional wisdom in the scale free networking crowd that highly connected hubs are the key to assuring that everybody is only a few hops away from everybody else. These hubs, ranked by the connectivity, are also at the top of the power-law distribution that is characteristic of scale free networks.

Marketing people know this - if you can get the hubs to recommend your product then your golden. Epidemiologists know this - if you can vacinate the hubs you can slow the spread of the disease.

One aspect of that which I don’t think is well appreciated is that if your a hub you need to have a strong immune system. It’s easy for the marketing guys to target hubs, it’s much harder for them to convince them. It strikes me as obvious that if being a highly social person is geneticly linked then it would be extremely advantagous - from a survial point of view - if that trait was linked to a strong immune system.

So I didn’t find this report surprising. Shyness can be deadly. That holds that shy people have weaker immune systems. I’m peeved by the value judgement there, i.e. that shy is bad. Social is only one of many many attributes that people might specialize in.

Much the same way that a plant pays a high cost having thorns or an exagerated sexual display (in energy that might be expended on other goals for example) I very much doubt that having a strong immune system is a low cost trait for a animal to carry. Same thing for risk adversion.

Meanwhile, I think there some subtle trade off lurking here between attractive and social that I’m having trouble framing up just right. Warning insta-Theory! But I suspect that attractive people then to be shy.