Thursday, January 14, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
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Vermilion Flycatcher, Percha Dam State Park, Arrey NM, January 12, 2010
These colorful little Vermilion Flycatchers are quick to launch out from a perch to snatch an insect out of the air 40 or 50 feet away. This little guy let me snap away at him at work for the better part of an hour but my little Panasonic DMC-FZ28 at 18x wasn't really up to the task. One could easily lust after better equipment at times like these. I caught a few in flight shots that could have been spectacular with a better camera.
Night camp
Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.
Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.