Saturday, January 19, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Ah the luxury of sleeping in
My version at least - I was up a 3:30 am or so for a while, then back to bed until 6:00 am, and now it's 11:00 am and I've finally had my breakfast; soon I'll do my morning ablutions and get on with the day. It's so nice to finally have a slightly warmer spot, good internet access, and working email that I've dropped everything to luxuriate in the plenty. By the time you read this (posted on the 23rd - I've been lazy for several more of these nice days) I will have caught up on many days worth of delayed posts with just a few more to go.
There goes another credit card
I got a phone call from security; someone used my card to order something in Great Britain. Great. Now I have to deal with getting the replacement card sent to me here in New Mexico, in addition to the usual hassle of changing the card assigned to the various accounts I use for automated bill paying. This might be a good time to start using a separate card just for bill paying and see if that gives a clue to where the security breach is next time someone "steals" my card. I guess it's time to go get my free credit reports again and check for identity theft.
Today's journey: You don't think I'm leaving this good access do you?
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
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.