< <<the fly-paper theory is working>> and adding to my my response here ... Message 20991655
... the flies are multiplying, fast, and learning furiously, and I figure the likely consequences are not priced in. What do you think?>
Jay, in 1974, we were driving around Europe. In hot, dusty Spain they have many kinds of ants. Ants are fascinating creatures.
We were stopped on the side of the road and I was conducting territoriality experiments.
I must have done this on various occasions and maybe in various countries, because I recall various types of ants which were living in some proximity to each other, at a respectful distance.
There was a range of ants. Big ones, red ones, black ones, small ones, tiny ones, middling ones. I forget exactly, but there weren't all just the same species.
So I would put a small piece of cheese somewhere between two ant tribes and watch proceedings.
There must have been some good rules for who gets the cheese, because there was never much fighting. There might be a minor skirmish, but one side or the other would leave the reward to the other.
The closer the cheese is to one group's HQ, the more likely they are to prevail.
Put it right by the other side's and the original owners gave up and surrendered it to those they'd previously defeated. If the cheese still had ants on it, they'd figure somebody had the rules wrong and there's be a renewed battle while the rules were sorted out again.
I was surprised how little war there was.
Being a BIG ant wasn't an overwhelming advantage. One contest was between monster ants and minuscule ones. The big ones would chomp at the ground with their huge mandibles, trying to get the tiny ones, which would be swarming over them. The big ones would lose to the little ones if too close to the littlies' base. And vice versa.
The USA SUVs love eating cheese and there is a LOT of it buried in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, so the USA ants get excited about what goes on in that area. They send scouts over there and see if they can't entice the ants in the area to trade the cheese for something better which the USA produces. Simply taking the cheese tends to lead to aggression from the local ants.
Since Islamic Jihad, Islam [whether Kurdish, Shiite or Sunni etc], Hezbollah, and whatever other red ant varieties there are in the region, are more or less one ant's nest, with HQ in Mecca, there are more or less a billion of them.
150,000 black ants, even if large, are unable to take cheese from 1,000,000,000 ants, even if small, if the cheese is sitting inside the black ant nest.
The flypaper theory sounds as though the proponents haven't studied ant wars.
I believe the likely consequences are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The rules of ants will apply and the black ants will re-establish voluntary trading agreements with new red ant rulers and will not be conducting cheese gathering expeditions by force.
So I think the likely consequences are priced in, as the consequences are not going to be as bad as the tsunami and that hasn't exactly knocked the world's economy off its axis. Don't forget, there will be good consequences as well as the bad and I belive the good will predominate. Iraqis are generally happy to have Saddam gone. It would be ironical if he wins the election, even if not by the same margin he got in the previous election he won [he got 100% of the vote].
Mqurice |
