Some great ‘evolution in progress’ stories

Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations
[Via Science Sushi]

This is a repost from April 24^th, 2010. Watching Speciation Occur is the second in my Evolution series which started with The Curious Case of Dogs

We saw that the littlest differences can lead to dramatic variations when we looked at the wide variety in dogs. But despite their differences, all breeds of dogs are still the same species as each other and their ancestor. How do species split? What causes speciation? And what evidence do we have that speciation has ever occurred?

Critics of evolution often fall back on the maxim that no one has ever seen one species split into two. While that’s clearly a straw man, because most speciation takes far longer than our lifespan to occur, it’s also not true. We have seen species split, and we continue to see species diverging every day.

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To many people think that the traces of evolution occur at such a slow pace that it is impossible to observe it.

Not true. As the post discusses, several instances of evolution happening in our lifetimes, with new species being created, surround us.

Firing insurance companies?

Lots of people can’t fire their insurance companies. #exactly
[Via Dave Winer's linkblog feed]

Lots of people can’t fire their insurance companies. #exactly

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The article does a great job destroying Romney’s point – you really only know that you need to fire an insurance company AFTER you become sick. And then you find that no other insurance company will take you. Because you are sick.

And few insurances companies will want to take a sick person who will just ‘fire’ the company when they become healthy again.

The only way around this is to remove pre-existing conditions as a reason for refusing insurance. Guaranteed issuance is a must.  Recission control is another. Romneycare did this and so does the ACA.

Repeal will simply make it harder to ‘fire’ health insurance companies, as well as leave a large number of Americans without any health insurance.

HIs reasons for hating Android mirror mine

Why I Hate Android
[Via parislemon]

Why do I hate Android? It’s definitely one of the questions I get asked most often these days. And most of those that don’t ask probably assume it’s because I’m an iPhone guy. People see negative take after negative take about the operating system and label me as “unreasonable” or “biased” or worse.

I should probably explain.

Believe it or not, I actually don’t hate Android. That is to say, I don’t hate the concept of Android — in fact, at one point, I loved it. What I hate is what Android has become. And more specifically, what Google has done with Android.

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He has a wonderful history time line of how android started out as a wonderful plan and then faltered under the demands of the wireless carrier – to the point that android is now simply another phone in the carriers mix.

Apple was able to wrest a lot of control away from the carriers simply because of the popularity of the iPhone. Not so with Google and it has been making deals with the Devil ever since.

Thus their support for the same net neutrality laws as the carriers – legislation that would hurt users but be great for carriers. Siegler’s dissatisfaction with Android and Google stem from similar areas – the need to screw the user in order to appease the carriers.

Jobs hated having the destiny of Apple controlled by any other company. Apple worked tirelessly to remove as many of these constraints as possible.

Google, on the other hand, has embraced these constraints. Often to the detriment of its users. A $99 unlocked Android that could be bought online would have been amazing and an iPhone killer. But the carriers did not want to be left out of the pipeline. So Google went along with them.

The wireless carriers have a long history of holding back innovation unless they could make a bundle on it – they charged more money for a ringtone than the entire song cost on iTunes.

The iPhone was not a seminal breakthrough simple because of its hardware or software. Apple was able to leverage a deal that resulted in a direct relationship between the user and the phone maker, without the needless influence of the carrier. That is one reason the iPhone is such a success.

Apple makes changes to help the user, with little regard for the carrier. On Android, the user is hampered not by the choices Google makes but by the intense control of the carriers.

Android is only as open as the carriers allow it to be. At the first possibility, they will remove that advantage. Reference updating of the operating system as an example.

MG Siegler gets it right:

Apple, for all the shit they get for being “closed” and “evil”, has actually done far more to wrestle control back from the carriers and put it into the hands of consumers. Google set off to help in this goal, then stabbed us all in the back and went the complete other way, to the side of the carriers. And because they smiled the entire time they were doing it and fed us this “open” bullshit, we thanked them for it. We’re still thanking them for it!

He places hope in Apple and Microsoft. Apple has demonstrated that it will do whatever is necessary to prevent any company from getting between them and their customers.

I’m not so sure about Microsoft, as I can see them making the same choice as Google. we will have to see.