Shoving these out the queue...
Oct. 31st, 2005 07:37 amI've had three articles in my queue for a while now, and having been unable to decide what to do with them I'm going to just put them here so I'll be able to find them later.
The first is a review of a rigorous analysis of the concept of fitness landscape, which in the mathematics of evolutionary theory starts to correspond to reality, showing how organisms "fit" into their niche, but how drift allows that fit (with some lag) to correspond to a changing environment. It's also interesting to see that even with a "can't get there from here" scenario, there is still the possibility to go around discontinuities without having to invoke anything other than drift and selection.
The second is a fascinating article from American Scientist called Coping with Selfishness. The article explains something called Selfish Routing, and the idea is simple: if everyone has complete freedom to choose two routes to a given destination and one route is on average more efficient (gets you there quicker) than the other, but worst case less efficient, the worst case scenario will tend to prevail because everyone will try and utilize the most efficient route.
The third article isn't fascinating, it's satisfying: The Only Debate on Intelligent Design Worthy of it's Subject. I must agree: Darwin Smash!
The first is a review of a rigorous analysis of the concept of fitness landscape, which in the mathematics of evolutionary theory starts to correspond to reality, showing how organisms "fit" into their niche, but how drift allows that fit (with some lag) to correspond to a changing environment. It's also interesting to see that even with a "can't get there from here" scenario, there is still the possibility to go around discontinuities without having to invoke anything other than drift and selection.
The second is a fascinating article from American Scientist called Coping with Selfishness. The article explains something called Selfish Routing, and the idea is simple: if everyone has complete freedom to choose two routes to a given destination and one route is on average more efficient (gets you there quicker) than the other, but worst case less efficient, the worst case scenario will tend to prevail because everyone will try and utilize the most efficient route.
The third article isn't fascinating, it's satisfying: The Only Debate on Intelligent Design Worthy of it's Subject. I must agree: Darwin Smash!
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