Help Me Evolve
Photo Credit: 
Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
What do you get when you add 1000 people on Big Wheels and Lombard Street in San Francisco?
The 7th annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel race.Laughingsquid.com has a great post about the event held in San Francisco. We need to have one of these in Brooklyn NYC.
Illustration by Edel Rodriguez based on source material from Frans de Waal
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.
The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress.
Our favorite folks over at Trendwatching.com have released their first 2007 report about the TRYSUMERS trend. The concept of consumers becoming more daring in their consumption patterns just because they can.You can also check out their 2007 Trend Report, crammed with emerging trends and examples from brands already capitalizing on them »»
Hate the name, love the trend. TRYSUMERS are transient, experienced consumers who are becoming more daring in how and what they consume, thanks to a wide range of societal and technological changes. Here’s our stab at defining the phenomenon:
TRYSUMERS: “Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying full access to information, reviews, and navigation, experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavors, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new outfits, new relationships, new *anything* with post mass-market gusto.”
To get you going, here’s a list of observations on what's encouraging a growing number of consumers to morph into TRYSUMERS:
Feathered prodigy: N'kisi leads the field
The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.
The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.
He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.
N'kisi's remarkable abilities feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.
N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.
