Comments / Feedback: Bargirls: The High Cost of Reproduction in the Reproductively Successful Philippines

by: mark twain

No guts no glory. Too bad you didn't run that gem, "Black Heart of Foreign Men in Asia." Stick even closed all references to it. He must have realized he was getting close to born again territory. I would comment but I only know 20 or so Filipino women and they all have degrees and are all working in Thailand.

by: korski

by: mark twain

Dispatch #63: The Black Heart of Foreign Men in Asia
By Korski

by: Dana

" . . . I give a concise definition of natural selection . . . "

Ok, if we can agree that the subject of natural selection and the subject of 'survival of he fittest' reside under the same umbrella I have a question of thirty years duration that no one can answer for me and that irritates people when I do ask it. To wit: how does the theory account for the fact that manatees and sheep have managed to survive in the natural world for thousands of years. As two examples of the incompleteness of the theory of 'survival of the fittest' they have zero ability to survive. They can't intimidate, predate, defend, or run. So how in the world have they survived? There are many more examples that make an obvious mockery of the theory of natural selection and addenda 'survival of the fittest'. There is a book here but so far no one has written it. I believe that no one has written this book because just like the subject of gravity for physicists; the questions are embarassing. All you have to do to look smart is to bring up manatees and sheep, but I can tell you from experience that after you do this everyone will be just waiting for you to leave the party. The title of the book?

MANATEES AND SHEEP: DARWIN'S NIGHTMARES

by: Korski

As two examples of the incompleteness of the theory of 'survival of the fittest' they have zero ability to survive. They can't intimidate, predate, defend, or run. So how in the world have they survived? There are many more examples that make an obvious mockery of the theory of natural selection and addenda 'survival of the fittest'.
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Everything you've written here demonstrates an enormous misunderstanding of the greatest single idea of all time. Yes, all time. Please do some reading, starting with any of Richard Dawkins many fine books.

by: Dana

" . . . the greatest single idea of all time."

The greatest single idea of all time can not account for long time surviving exceptions and you never read about this. Another elephant at the party that everyone is ignoring. I have probably read as much on this subject as most lay people and I understood what I read. But what I read did not do what it was supposed to do. It did not in a rigorous intellectual way look at exceptions. There is something going on here in the balance of nature that so far is beyond our understanding. How do defenceless animals survive? An attractive non-scientific answer for many people is that someone is looking after them. Scientists belittle this explanation but they can not offer another explanation that fits the greatest idea of all time.

by: Korski

The greatest single idea of all time can not account for long time surviving exceptions and you never read about this.

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No idea what you're talking about, and I teach this stuff. You may be reading a lot, but this isn't the same as understanding an idea that borders on being necessarily true, a tautology, and would not get one talking about "survival of the fittest" as you do.

by: Dana

"No idea what you're talking about,"

I am talking about you doing the hard thing, the thing that none of your contemporaries want to do. Teach your students in a defendable way why manatees and sheep have managed to survive. What part of anything that Darwin presented accounts for this?

Students asking this question in class should expect a good answer, What is it? Don't want to talk about manatees and sheep because they are my examples? Ok, how about the domestic cow in America? Pick your own examples. This is a book that has not been written. Animals without poison excreting skin (frogs), or smell (skunks), or horns, or scales, or speed, or highly aggressive nature, or quills, etc. are marked for death. Except, mysteriously, many of them are not marked for death. How does that fit into the 'greatest idea of all time'? So far, the question is better than the answer.

by: doctormja

I think it is good (for you) that you have tenure