wlh13

Friendfeed is the future of social networking and web discovery - I post much more there now than I do here, especially with the "share" tab in my tool bar

nice collection of Firefox extensions, both fun and practical

From the page: "Want to start a brawl at an evolution conference? Just bring up the concept of group selection: the idea that one mixed bag of individuals can be 'selected'� as a group over other heterogeneous groups from the same species. Biologists who would not hesitate to form a group themselves to combat creationism or intelligent design might suddenly start a pie fight to defend the principle that 'it's every man for himself.'

Yet Charles Darwin himself argued for group selection. He postulated that moral men might not do any better than immoral men but that tribes of moral men would certainly 'have an immense advantage'� over fractious bands of pirates. By the 1960s, however, selection at the group level was on the outs. Influential theorist George Williams acknowledged that although group selection might be possible, in real life 'group-related adaptations do not, in fact, exist.'

Richard Dawkins of the University of Cambridge, whose writings have reached millions, maintains that selection might not even reach such a high level of biological organization as the individual organism. Instead, he claims, selection operates on genes - the individual is the embodiment of the selection of thousands of selfish genes, each trying to perpetuate itself.

In the past few decades, however, group selection has made a quiet comeback among evolutionary theorists. E. O. Wilson of Harvard University and David Sloan Wilson (no relation) of Binghamton University are trying to give group selection full-fledged respectability. They are rebranding it as multilevel selection theory: selection constantly takes place on multiple levels simultaneously. And how do you figure the sum of those selections in any real-world circumstance? 'We simply have to examine situations on a case-by-case basis,'� Sloan Wilson says."

From the page: "As the lineage of meditators sat on their cushions and worked with their minds, they saw the same unfolding process: nine ways that the mind can be true to its inherent stability, clarity and strength. In their descriptions of nine stages of training the mind through the practice of shamatha meditation, or 'peaceful abiding,'� they left us signposts of that process. These guidelines are helpful because the mind is so vast that if we're left to our own devices, we'll usually just wander in thought. These nine stages are a map of the meditative process.

The first four stages - placement, continual placement, repeated placement and close placement - have to do with developing stability. Stages five and six - taming and pacifying - have to do with developing clarity. And the last three stages - thoroughly pacifying, one-pointed and equanimity - have to do with building strength."

From the page: "The president-elect has selected Steven Chu for energy secretary, Lisa Jackson for EPA administrator, Carol Browner as his energy ''czar,'' and Nancy Sutley to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Democratic officials with knowledge of the decisions said Wednesday.

Obama plans to name the four to the posts in the coming weeks, barring unforeseen developments. Still unclear is whom Obama will tap for interior secretary. Officials close to the transition said support for John Berry, the director of the National Zoo and a former assistant secretary at the Interior Department, was growing. But these officials also said Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and California Rep. Mike Thompson were still in the running."

From the page: "Imagine that 1 million years ago, long before the origin of humanity, a team of alien scientists landed on Earth to study its life-forms. Their first report would surely include something like the following: This planet is teeming with more than 1,000 trillion highly social creatures, representing at least 20,000 species! Their final report would surely contain the following key points...."

From the page: "In The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson survey the last 15 years of myrmecological research. Picking up where their Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ants left off, The Superorganism is a completely wonderful book. It is packed with astonishing findings and beautiful illustrations, and, happily, it also contains enough information about ant civilization to set up a few ants-vs.-humans scenarios. Let us skip lightly over the fact that to compare ants and humans is to pit thousands of species against just one. Rather, let's start with the idea that we begin the contest evenly matched - at 6.6 billion humans and approximately 5 million billion ants, humans and ants have roughly the same biomass. What if a global disaster struck? Who would come out on top?"

From the page: "Far beneath the vast political and economic consequences of a very conservative administration stumbling toward the nationalization of American banks, the implosion of the American consumer society, and the spreading of "toxic" investments around the globe lays a change in human consciousness and evolution unlike any before it. Like a tectonic plate in motion, everything above it is affected irrevocably. That change is toward responsibility, not away from it; toward sharing and away from hoarding; toward cooperation and away from competition; toward harmony and away from discord; toward contribution and away from exploitation.

Reconstruction of responsibility in economic and financial endeavors will follow deconstruction but the story is much larger than that. Both are symbolic of a species-wide change in human consciousness that is dramatically changing individual and collective experiences in challenging and profoundly positive ways and will continue to do so throughout our lives."