Gah, my troubles with blog consistency!

So I'm back from not posting in a while. I've been kind of busy last week or so, been sorting some things out and I've gotten like 4 chapters ahead on the Dawkins. I really plan to make posts more often more consistently, just to keep my writing up. So here we begin.

First things first, Dawkins can wait, let's talk some hockey. The drama that is the impending Ilya Kovalchuk trade is just edge of your seat intensity! I'm frothing with anticipation! (frothing??) Anyway, it turns out Atlanta's GM is the biggest moron on the planet and can't fork out the money to save his franchise. That's right, I said it. Ilya Kovalchuk is the only reason any fans come to the games, and now, it's going to be even worse. They're gonna miss the playoffs and suck. I would do anything to keep him if I were Don Waddell, unfortunately I am not. Kovalchuk wants to stay too, he's said it. He just wants a truck load of money, which he damn well deserves. Possibly the purest goal scorer in the game right now.

Sources including TSN and ESPN have said that Waddell has told Kovalchuk a trade could happen in a couple hours or a couple days. That could be as I'm typing this post, trade could be made as soon as I post this! But thinking about where he's going is kind of exciting.

It looks like the biggest lookers are New Jersey, Philly, and LA. Let's hope he doesn't go to Philly, besides they need someone more responsible defensively anyway. Though their offense would get even more nasty, but yeah, I can't stand the Flyers. Now, if he went to New Jersey, that would be obscenely dangerous. They really only have one guy that can score, Parise, the rest of the guys are good, but they are such a defensive team. With Kovy's absurd hands and impossible sniper skills, they would be lights out, instant cup contenders. Now with LA, he could do some damage there too. Again a strong defensive team, but one that can score. With an elite winger like Kovy, again, instant Cup contender.

There has also been talk about Chicago or Boston being interested. If Chicago gets him, you might as well not even play the rest of the season, they're already cup favorites. Boston could really use Kovy, since they traded Kessel they can't score worth shit. We'll see how this pans out, but I'm really excited to see what happens (please not Philly, please not Philly *crosses fingers*).

Ok, so now that we're done with that, let's move on.

The Dawkins is getting a little tedious. His argument is very clear at this point: genes are the central unit of life, as opposed to individual organisms, and can explain many counter intuitive things that happen in nature like altruism. And now he's just running through examples, giving all the details, and not as much crazy lol statements about worshipping evolution or the epic battle that is gene competition. Honestly it's just been a lot of stuff about how the family works. Like a child is 50% their parent and 50% their sibling and vice versa. Though they're more likely to know for a fact that their parent is actually the same genes as them. And basically he's gone through a lot of examples and play around this kind of thing. Shown some related things that go on in the world of nature. Not compelling like the earlier stuff.

I guess I'll just hit some random stuff that was kind of interesting:

He talks about game theory, which I've never understood fully, but actually seems really fascinating. Essentially it is the study of how games work and how strategies find balances. It is a mathematical field, but is often used when looking at the behavior of animals and why they do the things they do. Like who aggressive strategies work well against, who passive strategies work well against, and then more complex strategies, and it seems like after a while they seem to really balance out, or one becomes more dominant, then fluctuates when another becomes more dominant. Apparently the theory insists that like there is an ultimate strategy that will remain dominant, that is more complex, but honestly I think it is much more likely to have this fluctuation and oscillation. (though like I said I really don't understand this fully how it works).

But what I find fascinating about it, is I wonder if it's ever been applied to sports. If you just look at sports you can watch how the strategies have evolved over the years. In football it was really run and short passes in the 70's and 80's, but now (especially with the rules changes), it's really a pass first game. Then again though, it seems like the rules often change in nature too, consider the world before and after humans. Our ability to construct things changes the playing field entirely, way more than the "no touch" rules on passing in the NFL. You can see the same with hockey, after Wayne Gretzky pretty much broke the stand up goalie style, the new strategy became butterfly. Anyway, I'm very curious if and how game theory could apply to sports, especially considering sports are games.

Meh, I guess that's it, nothing else really made me think. He's currently trying to back up why altruism exists. I don't think it's that far a stretch, but he wants to make sure the details are right.

Alright, I should be back soon. At least for a small Dawkins update, and or some other stuff, for now I'm off.