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Sunday, January 4, 2009

I Knew It!

Why am I writing about agriculture? It's a long story that started at my first blog, kccomics.com. In May 2002 I was in a sciency mood. I was thinking about evolution. I was taught that group evolution doesn't exist, natural selection occurs on the individual level and individuals don't give two hoots others. An exception, kin selection, is used to explain the evolution of social organisms like bees and people. I started out my 2002 blog post with an overview of kin selection:

In animal behavior in Berkeley I was taught that social insects such as wasps and ants are willing to help each other, especially the queen, because the workers have a genetic relationship with the reproductives. Thus, the workers would help pass on their own genes by helping the queen raise her young.

Kin selection didn't sit well with me though. Sure humans can identify kin, but what about insects? I guffawed that bees would have a concept of kin to select for. Of course the notion that bees count genetic relatedness is a misperception of sociobiology. It's a misconception that sociobiologists spread themselves though*, so it took some thinking to transcend it. I came up with two reasons why social insects are successful, or reasons why they could evolve. Reason 1 isn't really relevant here. Reason 2 is where the money is:

2. A worker which defies the society and does not help the queen is completely maladaptive. A nest of such workers would quite quickly doom themselves and its queen, which then stops their genes from being passed on. Since the alternative to a group of altruistic workers is so highly selected against by natural selection, it's reasonable to think that any surviving insect societies would not be so self destructive.

I was halfway to a group selection explanation of social insects. What logically follows but I didn't say is this: given limited resources, a nest that is more altruistic will outcompete a nest that is less altruistic, and is more likely to be selected for and reproduce. I ended my blogpost with this:

I'll complete that thought at a later time.

I should have finished my thought! I was reminded of my past musings by an article in American Scientist. The article, co-authored by none other than E.O Wilson, originator of sociobiology and most famous social insect researcher, basically said the same thing, but better with a full explanation with tons of evidence. From slime molds to chickens in a lab, the authors show that selection can occur on groups, favoring successful teams over single extraordinary individuals working singly. Group selection is back, and I totally called it. So now I am making a concerted effort to put my other "crazy" ideas down to see if they pan out. And I'm going to finish my thoughts.


*This happens every time a sociobiologist says a gene is "selfish," or "a gene wants," or a gene has any expression of will or emotion. It's almost inescapable given the limits of language, but man is it annoying!

Article Citation: Wilson DS and Wilson EO. 2008. Evolution "for the Good of the Group." American Scientist. 96(5): 380.

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Friday, December 5, 2008

The Chan Hypothesis for the Origin of Agriculture

One of the big debates in archaeology is the origin of agriculture. Agriculture marks an important turning point in human history: it sparked a change from nomadic to settled groups, it enabled population growth, and our modern lives depend on it. So it is natural to wonder about the hows and whys of the origin of agriculture. One theory is that hard times forced people to develop agriculture, which caused population to grow. Another theory is that population grew from good times, which forced people to develop agriculture. Yet another is that the common tradition of throwing giant feasts to show one's own status caused people to develop agriculture to enable larger feasts (this is the least sensible, IMO).

Personally, I don't think there is a monumental event that led to the invention of agriculture. My theory is that agriculture developed simply because it is more attractive than foraging!

Imagine you're a forager. Every day you spend several hours hiking a few kilometers gathering nuts and fruit, and hunting small animals for food. It's a nice life, but involves a lot of legwork (and armwork, carrying that stuff). Now, while chatting with a buddy about foraging, you put a few pieces together: the seeds bring back, when dropped accidentally on the ground, sometimes sprout into a whole new plant! Well hold on, if you could organize these seeds, you could control where your favorite plants show up. Now instead of hiking a few kilometers for scattered nodes of plants, you have a ton of plants growing next to your house! Who wouldn't go for that? The same thing happens with herding animals: after a good hunt you find a cache of baby animals with no parents. You take them home and put them in a pen so they can grow up big and delicious. From there you realize if you didn't eat the adults and instead let them do their thing, they'll make more babies, and so on. No more hunting! It's dangerous and likely to fail. Just keep a breeding population next to your house and you won't have to go ten yards for a nice, guaranteed meaty meal. Your animals will need a food supply though... luckily you have dozens of edible plants next to your house!

Of course my story is not testable scientifically, but it is based on a sequence of very likely events. Also, yes agriculture takes a lot of work too, and there is a lot of scientific evidence that agriculture led to a decline in health. But, people don't care about stuff like that. Given the options of hiking around or working around your house, the choice is pretty obvious. It just takes people to figure it out, and I don't think that is very hard either given a few lucky observations and some patience. So that's the Chan hypothesis for the origin of agriculture: it' developed because it is a lot more convenient than foraging and people are lazy.

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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

A Giant Facepalm for Mankind part 2

I'm so glad I didn't go to Rancho Bernardo High, what with the recent selling ads on tests incident and the past broomstick-baseball-team incident (which is exactly what it sounds like), the underwear incident, the noose incident, and the hacking incident. PHS FTW!

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A Giant Facepalm for Mankind

Sometimes I think I'm too critical of science news. But I occasionally see an article that irks me so much because it make so many basic scientific mistakes. Take this one for example. First it's the headline: "Cane toad evolution 'too fast for bodies.'" How can evolution be too fast? The article actually explains it: toads are literally fast because they move fast, which is putting strain on their bodies. But that doesn't jibe with the headline's meaning at all! Anyway the article goes on to say that researchers found that fast toads become arthritic which then cause a weakening of the immune system. Cane toads are a pest in Australia so they are suggesting using controlled dispersion of cane toad illnesses to kill them while they're weak.

That plan doesn't even sound good on paper, or in this case, computer screen. This little tidbit reinforces the flaw:

"[Arthritis] affected 10 per cent of toads on the invasion front, he said."

So, basically the plan to give toads diseases will only work on 10 percent of the population, leaving 90 percent which are resistant. And that 90% will then become 100% because the weak ones died. And when that happens the disease will have no effect whatsoever and toad populations will keep on growing. Why even bother in the first place with the disease?


Also, the article ends with a gratuitous Old World use of the work "chink:"

"All these vulnerabilities constitute chinks in the toads' armour.''

While technically there's nothing wrong with that, it's like using the word "niggardly," the word is similar (or identical!) to a loaded word. There's a reason we don't refer to rabbits as "cunnies" anymore...

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Sunday, November 23, 2008

I actually finished a movie today. I've had it from Netflix for over a month and just got to it now. It adds significantly to the genre of elephant conservation films, following such classics as Operation Dumbo Drop. Oh yeah, and martial arts. It's The Protector, starring Tony Jaa.

I'm not sure what I expected going in, except for grade A Muay Thai action. The plot is beyond ridiculous, even considering the premise of a traditional guardian of elephants in Thailand traveling to Australia to rescue two elephants stolen from his community. It's loaded with action movie cliches from the cops thrown off the case to the girl in the gang who has a heart of gold. There are also some curveballs like the x-treeeeme street gang made of skaters and motocross bikers (why don't they sell their gear and buy guns?) and a horrid computer generated sequence. The acting is D-average. And the hero's solution to every situation is pretty much walk int and start kicking. It's basically Streets of Rage, the movie.

But the action more than makes up for the silly story. Tony Jaa is really really good, and the cinematography greatly accentuates the action sequences (I hear Quantum of Solace is greatly deficient in this area). One especially cool scene is when he fights through building 3 (or is it 4?), a gangster restaurant:



It's one continuous shot!

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Saturday, November 22, 2008

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

A few unfortunate things have happened which mean nothing by themselves but together has really made me uncontrollably Hulk-angry. No, don't really want to talk about it. Just a fair warning for our next interaction.

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

"A friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said no. But I wanted a regular banana later, so... yes." - Mitch Hedberg

With the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, it takes a while to sign on to World of Warcraft. On busy weekend nights, the queue to get in could take over an hour. So far my best strategy for dealing with the queue is to constantly be attempting to sign on. Who knows, in an hour maybe I'll feeling like playing and *bam* instant access. If I'm idle for too long, the game will boot me and I'll have to line up all over again though.

Ah, ten more minutes and it's go time.

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