io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 11:33 AM
Sun Nov 8
10 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors: tips@io9.com
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz | Email
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders | Email
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner | Email
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis | Email
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan | Email
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier | Email
Ed Grabianowski | Email
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan | Email
Lauren Davis | Email
Chris Hsiang | Email
Lynn Peril | Email
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins | Email
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox | Email
Interns:
Tim Barribeau | Email
Julia Carusillo | Email
Alex Eichler | Email
Cyriaque Lamar | Email
Caitlin Petrakovitz | Email
Mary Ratliff | Email
Josh Snyder | Email
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/07/09
Female preference and how it steers the course of evolution is an area of study that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but it isn't unknown.
The water strider study parallel's a study done in mallard ducks. Over 70% of copulation is forced copulation by one or more males (rape/gang rape) . However, very few offspring result from forced copulation. Only about 3%. Female ducks have evolved highly elaborate reproductive organs to keep the undesirable males from impregnating them. Plus, they have the ability to store sperm from their chosen mates in their bodies for up to 10 days. #science
11/06/09
(Peels of loud sardonic and slightly unbalanced laughter!) #science
11/06/09
Compare this to the situation in more and more institutions of higher education, where the sex ratio is approaching (or even blowing straight through) 60% female.
11/07/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/07/09
11/07/09
11/06/09
Water Striders don't consume alcohol. #science
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
Just sayin'..there's no need to use the whole entire bottle, guys. Unless you're stranded in the middle of the Arctic and the only way to find you is to sniff you out, just a dab will do ya. #science
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/07/09
[jezebel.com]
Hence the preference for "Bad Boys". Those guys are honest with you. They'll tell you right up front they don't give a flying f--k about a relationship. They tell you straight up they're horny and want to get laid....and honesty really can be the best policy sometimes.
[jezebel.com]
11/06/09
As for isolated populations theory, this is familiar to anyone who has lived in a small town and seen the local assholes/louts have their way with the local ladies.
11/06/09
11/06/09
10/14/09
10/13/09
In the 70's, I worked as a student aid at a small research center a thousand miles from Hanford, and years before TMI. We documented lots of unusual things like this, and though it wasn't my job to interpret any data, it was not completely uncommon to see strange malformations in the odd insect. You'd see thousands of normal ones, and then some lady bug or grass hopper would show up with an eye only half formed, or wings that were not functional when they should be.
When you have kids by the hundreds or thousands, and all your millions of relatives are doing the same, there are going to be some that just don't come out right.
Not saying radiation isn't a cause for concern. Only that just because you find a bug near Hanford, or Sellafield that looks funny doesn't mean that it might not have just come out messed up no matter where it hatched, or when.
10/13/09
08/31/09
08/31/09
It's set up metaphorically of course, and the commentators use the gross, de-humanizing language that is always used to characterize those who live in slums. And yet upon closer inspection, these residents are those things. Aside from the lead and his child, there is zero sense of the individual. They behave as a flock, waiting for direction. They arguably create their conditions not because of outside pressure, but because they actually are that way by nature. They are, in fact, based on a pest, not on a people.
The danger of a corporatist bureaucratic response becomes undercut. The reverse implications back to people still irk me.
And at the moment that you might dig deeper, it becomes a (great, no doubt) shoot-em-up.
*shrugs* But I still liked it.
08/31/09
Also, keep in mind that all of the info we hear about the 'prawns' is from humans, and is thus hearsay. It could easily be exaggerated, uninformed, biased and racist. Or, it might not, it could be completely correct. But they are also obviously sapient. If a people really are like the prawns biologically (apparently directionless, stupid, violent, addicted to cat food, lazy, etc.), does that excuse what MNU and various other humans did to them? or does their sapience make them beings to be treated with respect and with rights?
08/31/09
08/31/09
It's obvious in the displacement of Palestinians, of the Vietnamese in the 60s, and of the treatment of Gypsies and other "lower class" groups in the 30s and 40s (I could go on and on of course, sub-Sahara Africa anyone?) that some people, who hold considerable influence in world affairs, view a large portion of humanity as "useless eaters", and thus, treat them more as animals than humans and as burdens than anything else.
That's why the allegory was so strong IMO, and why the use of the pejorative "prawn" was so fitting. Most of us are merely annoyances to the hidden corporate masters like MNU.
08/31/09
Aside from Christopher, regardless of which lens is being used, every implication I can remember, is exactly that.
It seems to me that one of the messages of such a film is "Really, what else could you do?" Which is a horrible message.
Now maybe it is meant to say "how would we react to a 'culture' that is so radically different from ours that we wouldn't know what to do." Which is great. But then you have to be careful not to analogize too closely to actual conditions imposed upon actual people, because the implication is that the actual people were actually similar enough to these 'prawns' (in being not just in perception) for the analogy to work.
I realize I'm overthinking it, but once I'm handed what is partially a "message" movie, what do you expect.
08/31/09
You might think that's horrible, but that's more of a subjective emotion than anything resembling objectivity. We ARE similar to the aliens, it's just that we are fed so much crap to keep us occupied that most of us don't see it, or we are unwilling to see it.
I realize I'm treading dangerously close to Matrix territory there, and I am probably overthinking it for most io9 commenters, but for me the analogy was dead on in relation to humanity's struggle of the haves vs. the have nots.
That's why, for me, the film was so poignant and the message transcended even the outer vision of apartheid. But that was the beauty of what Blonkamp did, he allowed us to project our own ideas onto the film and didn't spoonfeed us his concept of "what it all meant."