fluctuating populations

Beagles has the butterfly effect down correctly.  We only measure conditions at certain points so we don't know what the conditions are between them, which are not all that different, but any difference makes a big difference further down in time.  The only way we could have perfectly accurate predictions is if we knew what the starting conditions were everywhere.  And then we would have to be able to measure them with a precision that we will probably never have.

Another chapter in the book was about measuring animal populations.  Generally animal populations hold steady because too many in one year leads to less food for them which leads to less animals the next year which leads to more food which leads to more animals after that, so it goes up and down a little but sticks close to some number.  There are other factors like disease or more predators, but after an initial increase or decrease things settle once again around some certain population.

But not always, sometimes the population just fluctuates randomly and never settles into any groove.  The scientists thought well something else must be going on that they were missing.

They came up with an equation: population = rx(1-x), where x (always less than 1) represented the previous population.  They would plug in the resulting value of population into x and solve the equation again and eventually they would reach a number that didn't change and that would be the next year's population.  The r was the rate of reproduction.  Different animals have different rates of reproduction and that has an effect on next year's population. 

This equation was a pretty nifty thing and they played around with it a little, varying the value of r.  Suddenly when r equaled 2.683, the population didn't settle into one value, but half the time it would settle into one number half the time another, at a slightly higher value there would be four solutions, then eight, and then at some point it would not settle into any number but just fluctuate willy-nilly, just as the populations of some animals do, not because crazy things are happening among them, but because the laws of math, which rule the laws of nature, were crazy and so decreed.


How about this bill that the reps, except for McCain and Lindsay Graham (sometimes he seems like the sanest rep in the senate, and other times he wants to blow up all our enemies), just passed with the help of the White Shadow, where if your bank fucks you over you can't file a class action suit against them, but have to submit it to an arbitrator of the bank's choice?  Outrageous.  How about that two man operation from the secretary of the interior's home town getting a contract to rewire all of Puerto Rico?  Also outrageous.  While the prez treats gold star mothers shamelessly, his gang of thieves rip off the country.  And nothing can be done about it because that mob of yokels still love the cheeto.


A ritual is fine.  I'm not so hot on an organized religion or national symbols but they are okay too for those who want them, but making them compulsory for everybody, like saluting the flag or enacting religious dogma into law, is not fine.