Thursday, 12 March 2015

The Media and Negative Sum Games



How come when you write on a page and the pen stops working it won'twork again on that spot after fixing it

The ball-point of the pen requires friction to roll it and make it apply ink. Once you try to use it(showing it's already getting gummed up inside and requires even more friction than usual) and drag the dry ball over the paper, you're basically smoothing the fibers in the paper down (picture running a steamroller over a field of hay, but on a microscopic level) and greatly reducing the friction.

Long strokes to get the ink going help with this a lot.

Why do Desert Tortoises release all bodily fluids when they're nervous/scared when Water is scarce in the desert?

Many animals defecate when scared as part of a predator defense mechanism. Often this is especially bad smelling, sticky, forceful, or slippery. You see this is reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. It could easily be due to this, or as part of a relic behavior.

A note on all the conversation about mutations on this page. Mutations do not have to be beneficial to persist, they have to not be harmful. This is a really important point in evolution that's often phrased incorrectly. It's not really, " Survival of the fittests," as it is, "*Death of the least fit*."

It's really more "on average death of the contextually less fit and reproduction of the contextually more fit."