Word: darwinians
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Conventional wisdom has long held that mammals spent millions of years in Darwinian limbo. As long as dinosaurs roamed the earth, our distant ancestors never got to be much more than cringing, shrewlike creatures that slinked out at night to nibble timorously on plants and insects when the terrible lizards were asleep. Only when a rogue comet wiped the dinosaurs out, went the story, did mammals begin to earn a little evolutionary respect...
...What can happen when this yearning for a better life remains unsatisfied is vividly illustrated in Bihar?the region where 2,500 years ago the Buddha attained enlightenment. Today, Bihar is India's poorest state and can't provide the work its people need. The result is a Darwinian scramble for employment: a few lucky ones get the jobs; others migrate; and on the fringes, some of the disgruntled join the gangsters, extortionists and Marxist guerrillas that have made Bihar one of India's most lawless places. Buddhism died out long ago here, and shows little sign of taking hold...
...interventions fail, brutal Darwinian realism may have to replace cushy Marxian idealism in the fight for normal human relations. A pod-head’s brain can only handle so much stimulation before it becomes fried and requires a long-term break. Until this happens, numbers will dwindle as pod-heads cannot use their sense of hearing to warn against the unexpected car or bus. They’d better watch out when crossing Mass...
...looming humiliation of Annenberg; the Darwinian process of forming blocking groups; the problem sets and papers; the slow and purposeful slides up the totem pole. What do you get after three years of toil? One night at Iruña a group of fifteen—err, make that 11—seniors joined together as they do every year at FM’s behest, and tried to answer that question...
What unfurled was pseudo-Darwinian competition: those deemed “fittest” by the voting populace won—and deservedly so. The winners were the students who postered every entryway in their yard weeks in advance, the ones who knocked on doors and schmoozed with potential constituents, and the go-getters with enough initiative to draw up entire platforms. The losers? Kids (like me) grasping at whichever extracurricular straws were closest at hand...