Strategy of Predator Satiation

An effective strategy of predator satiation involves two adaptations. First, the synchrony of emergence or reproductions must be very precise, thus assuring that hte market is truly flooded, and only for a short time. Secondly, this flooding cannot occur very often, lest predators simply adjust their own life cycle to predictable times of superfluity. If bamboos flowered every year, seed eaters would track the cycle and present their own abundant young with the annual bounty. But if the perio...

 Star Trek is Atheist

On the subject of faith, Trek had a very clear position. Of everything in my past, it is this one show that I most credit for being able to identify myself as an atheist. There was a recurring plotline in so many episodes that it almost became a running theme—some all-powerful being would set itself up as God but would eventually turn out to be nothing more than an advanced alien or megalomaniacal computer. As a little kid watching episodes like “Return of the Archons” and “The Apple,...