27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
The Communal Nature of Tabletop Gaming Complicates Unders...
De Koven’s concept of play is predicated on the idea that play, as a purposeless act, is the means through which we can build community and move closer to living better lives. He ultimately moves away from the idea of playing games and towards a purer idea of play beyond games, play as mastery over nothing in particular (De Koven 2013). For De Koven, games are at best a means to an end, a way to encourage an initial sense of playfulness; at worst, they are a controlling aspect over play, so... 1 
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notes12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
Feminist Portrayal in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Writing
All day the memory of this interview haunted him. He felt that he had come very badly out of it. She had showed herself to be his superior on his own pet subject. She had been courteous while he had been rude, self-possessed when he had been angry. And then, above all, there was her presence, her monstrous intrusion to rankle in his mind. A woman doctor had been an abstract thing before, repugnant but distant. Now she was there in actual practice, with a brass plate up just like his own, comp... 1 notes
notes05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Survival of the Fittest Doesn't Apply to Animals in a Soc...
Such biological ideas as the 'survival of the fittest,' whatever their doubtful value in natural science, are utterly useless in attempting to understand society ... The life of a man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics that are not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis ... the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa ... Social improvement is a product of...Folksonomies: society social darwinism
Folksonomies: society social darwinism
1 notes
notesWhere all members rely on all other members.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Social Darwinism of Wealth Consolidation
While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Folksonomies: social darwinism
Folksonomies: social darwinism
1 notes
notesAndrew Carnegie argues that economic inequality is good for the species because it promotes natural selection.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Who Really Needs Bioethics
Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are--not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes. 1 notes
notesIt's not scientists who need ethics when it comes to genetic engineering, it's ordinary consumers who will jump at the chance to improve their children with the technology.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Postmating Competition
Sexual selection doesn’t end with the sex act itself: males can continue
to compete even after mating. In many species, females mate with more
than one male over a short period of time. After a male inseminates a
female, how can he prevent other males from fertilizing her and stealing
his paternity? This postmating competition has produced some of the
most intriguing features built by sexual selection. Sometimes a male
hangs around after mating, guarding his female against other suitors.
Wh... 1 notes
notesVarious evolutionary strategies males of different species keep a female from mating with other males after sex.
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Competition Causes Death
Biologists have persistently overestimated the importance of physical causes of premature death rather than biological ones. In virtually any account of evolution, drought, frost, wind, or starvation looms large as the enemy of life. The great struggle, we are told, is to adapt to these conditions. Marvels of physical adaptation—the camel's hump, the polar bear's fur, the rotifer's boil-resistant tunare held to be among evolution's greatest achievements. The first ecological theories of sex... 1 notes
notesAnimals die from competition with other animals, few die of natural causes.
09 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Campbell's Rule of Design Through Evolution
We should think of it like this - evolutionary theory describes how design is created by the competition between replicators. Genes are one example of a replicator and memes another. The general theory of evolution must apply to both of them, but the specific details of how each replicator works may be quite different.
This relationship was clearly seen by the the American psychologist Donald Campbell (1960, 1965) long before the idea of memes was invented. He argued that organic evolution, ...
1 Natural selection doesn't just apply to biological designs, but exists on molecular and memetic levels as well.
