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Carnivorous Pitcher Plant "Out-Thinks" Insects
schwit1 writes A carnivorous pitcher plant is changing its behavior in response to natural weather fluctuations, allowing it to give up its prey in order to capture more. The pitcher plant, which has liquid-filled leaves shaped like funnels, has the ability to allow some of its prey, such as ants, to escape by "switching off" its trap." The first ant reports back to the other ants that it found a large batch of sweet nectar, causing a large contingent of ants to descend upon it. If the trap captures the first ant, it won't be able to capture many more ants later.
The plant kingdom's equivalent of a honey pot!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Knowing that the Federation would would send a veritable Armada of Science vessels to feast upon
>. If the trap captures the first ant, it won't be able to capture many more ants later.
I wish all people were as smart as this plant.
Give up some free time now to do your school work, get paid $800,000 more later.
Give up the opportunity to cuss your boss out today, end up with a raise next month, after discussing the issue calmly and professionally.
Give up the girl offering easy sex now, have a self-respecting partner for the rest of your life.
Give up the Starbuck's and iPhone 6 today, retire 10 years earlier.
SO much of wisdom, and of success, comes down to this one thing, to delayed gratification.
remember the paddles at the top of the chutes? First time you hit them, they're in place and divert the ball back to the launch flippers, then they disappear so the next time the ball comes down it disappears down the chute.
Same thing.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It occurred to me my post could come across as arrogant. I screw that up plenty. I make a ton of mistakes. MOST of my dumbest mistakes involve trying to get what I want right now, rather than what will make me happy in the long term . All of the examples I listed are things I've screwed up and had to fix.
"Out-thinks"? Basically it evolved not to produce a protein for part of the day because that resulted in better survival rates from more nutrients. Cool, but why call it thinking, even with quotes when we are big boys and girls and can understand evolutionary processes. Does Slashdot really have to resort to Buzzfeed fringy-worthy headlines these days?
I've worked in a lot of fields. The examples listed were all things I've done both ways - making the short-term, impatient decision the first time, than when I had another chance I tried the long term option. I've scrubbed toilets, I've flipped burgers, I've been a programmer at the bottom of the totem pole, I've been the CEO of several different companies. I've been hired, I've been fired, and for 20 years I've been hiring and occasionally firing other people.
Most of my big mistakes through all of it were when I was thinking about what I want now, rather than the results I want five years bfrom nowm
I, for one, welcome our new carnivorous pitcher plant overlords.
It may not have been a radical mutation or even a series of minor ones, but rather the long-term weeding out of less successful genetic combinations.
The plant is obviously outperforming our politicians in terms of foresight.
I have an LG Volt with 1.2 Ghz quad-core processor. It's just as productive as the new iphone. I paid $120. The guy down the hall paid $620 for a new iphone. So I paid $500 less. Suppose we make decisions like that once every three months. I put the $500 in an index mutual fund, he puts it into shiny toys. We do that from age 25 to age 50. At 50, I'll* have $183,909 in my fund, he'll have some broken antique phones. At 60, I'll have $468,368 more than him, just from buying the newest shiny electronics or "settling for" last year's smartphone model.
Combine that with me choosing a cash car instead of the lease he choose and I end up over a million dollars ahead. Once I have $2 million, then I can do and buy pretty much whatever I want, and have no stress about my financial situation.
* "I" am actually a weak example. Another guy across the hall is doing much better than me - he's on track to retire at age 48. By spending as much as the median income was in 1950s (inflation adjusted), he only has to spend 16 years of his life working.
AC wrote: "If all people were that smart and all of them qualified for $800.000 jobs who would clean out the sewers and clean the floors?"
See also, by Bob Black: http://www.whywork.org/rethink...
Or "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
> I'm spending about $5,000 on a vacation now. Because my kids are only kids for a very short period of time.
Did you save up $5,000, so you are now able to do that without worrying about?
Or are you putting it on credit, potentially creating a problem for yourself later?
If the former, that's awesome, and an example of the kind of thing I aspire to.
The plant: “The plant’s key trapping surface is extremely slippery when wet, but not when dry. By ‘switching off’ their traps for part of the day, pitcher plants ensure that scout ants can return safely to the colony and recruit nest-mates to the trap. Later, when the pitcher becomes wet, these followers get caught in one sweep.”
My wife: Her pussy was always wet until we got married; then it dried up.
ba da boom!
> I'm spending about $5,000 on a vacation now. Because my kids are only kids for a very short period of time.
Did you save up $5,000, so you are now able to do that without worrying about?
The fallacy here is that a $5k vacation is five times better than a $1k vacation -- or that it's even close to five separate $1k vacations. One of the best family vacas I ever had as a kid involved staying at cheapo motels along the midAtlantic coast, getting up early to check out the local birding scene, dining at local indie establishments, etc. No Plastic Kingdom or Floating FoodOrgy can compare.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
And if you're too busy thinking about five years from now, you'll end up making lots of mistakes in the now.
> Cite, please. Even a $5 cup of coffee a day and a $600 iWhatever per year only add up to ~$2000 per year. Over 40 years, that's $80,000. Can YOU live on $8,000 a year??
Check this out. This is going to blow your mind, and if you're smart, change your life. It comes out to not $80,000, but $733,637.22! Here's the thing:
The first year, you sock away $2,000 in your low-risk index mutual fund. At the end of the year, the money has earned you $180, so at the end of the first year you have $2,180 from that first year. You add $2,000 more from not buying coffee, which is $4,180. Over the next year, that earns $376 of dividends or interest, for $4556 total. Your money expands exponentially!
Even if you just put away $2,000 ONCE, then never add to it, in 40 years that $2,000 turns into $62,819.10. This is how most millionaires became millionaires - by putting away about $200-$500 per month.
Here's a calculator that makes it easy to compute the results of saving different amounts for different periods of time:
http://www.daveramsey.com/arti...
Since you mentioned a 40-year time horizon, you can safely use 9% as your interest rate. The market has good years and bad years, but over any 10-20 year period it's rather consistent - you'll get an annualized return of 9% over any long period.
I love reading about the complexities of the plant kingdom. Plants that communicate. Plants that delay eating for a bigger meal later. All cool things from organisms that have been evolving longer than any vertebrate.
The census bureau reports that:
over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; and people with a master's degree, $2.5 million
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/...
And that includes people who got degrees in African-American Art History! People who chose degrees with a thought toward doing productive work earn even more.
...or one hundred. Now, if only the plant could do the same thing to mosquitoes....
Well, it all depends. I just spent a little over $5k to go to Universal resort with my family for the Harry Potter parks , and I think it was well worth it. At least I can cross it off of my bucket list. Oh, and the money was already in the bank. Kinda hurts to see it go, but at least it didn't put me in debt.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Also, if you apply the SAME type of thinking to choosing which company to work for, choosing the job with the best prospects for advancement rather than the best starting salary, you do even better.
Do you care to elaborate what things you wanted "now" back then?
You CAN try to become very educated in not only stocks, but in specific industries, then try to pick the right stocks. Some people do that. If you're good or lucky, you might make quick money. That's not the way I do it, or the way most people do it.
If you pick ANY decade any time in the last 80 years, the indexes never lost money. Which means broad bases mutual funds never lost money. Ever. Over ANY 20 year period, the returns are about the same. For exanple, the economy was booming when Clinton took office, and declining when he left office. The Bush Jr years were similar - good folowed by bad. That's pretty consistent - up and down in the short term, but in the long term you can pretty much guarantee you'll get BOTH, good and bad. And the good years always offset the bad, plus about 9%.
Picking a fund is simple with this boring but always successful approach. You want a no-load index fund. That just means your not paying sales fees, and the fund owns a shitload of different stocks, so you don't care if one does poorly. Bonus points if you pick one with a low "expense ratio", which simply means you're not paying much to the company operating the fund. It's slow, it's boring, and it's how people become millionaires if they don't get a movie deal.