Thinking - Population density, innovation, and some evolution

I've just spent the last two months testing my invention engine by not using it.

It's the last of it's formal tests that I have in mind.

The test is to see if it really does anything, or if it's just me coming up with ideas that solve the problems.

I for one can see the difference.

Lately my ideas have all been a little thin, impractical, had no sense of direction, and seemed to involve phlegm. That last one may in fact account for all the others, but I've never been one to let reality crush a story.

In Australia, we (white invaders) have this traditional ingrained presupposition that we are all highly skilled in making do. We feel a country wide enthusiasm that makes us believe we can fix stuff, and that everything will be ok, as long as we have a bit of fencing wire. (I suspect north america has the same thing with gaffer tape) The result is we can be left as a wire-bound backwater in the struggle for national identity.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, so bear (forbearance, not the big furry thing you never want to find in your pantry) with me and see what happens.

Birds are dense in the head.

Their brains are packed with a stack of connections. More per cubic whatever than we have by a long shot.

The secret is in needing to be lightweight.

Now I have to mention evolution.

I've been avoiding this for a long time.

Evolution, as we know, is real.

It's a fact.

It happens all the time and is not something relegated to the past. It's something that happens all the time and was going on this morning before breakfast.

Some guy named Darwin came up with a theory called "Natural Selection" that speaks to what powers it... to what does the selecting of one critter over another, and leaving them safe to mate with the other successful ones, but that's just a theory as to how it happens.

The fact that evolution occurs isn't in question.

Anyway...

Some states are great and some never make it. And lately I've found myself wondering what it takes to make it. It's clear as a species, that we are moving away from joules in our diet as a predictor of a country's success.

If joules still rated as a success marker, I for one would be right up there as a candidate for some kind of award. I have virtually unlimited access to calories, but I'm not sure if it would do me any good. And even less sure it does my country any good.

So if not calories, then what? Some say necessity is the mother of invention. I say necessity is the non gender specific parent of making do with a bit of fencing wire.

I think the thing that creates true innovation is discontent.

The result is that it's not the meek that will inherit the earth...



It's the miserable.




120 Things in 20 years - In thinking  "population density, innovation, and some evolution", it seems everything is progressing according to plan.