IGM Space, Not Competition

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Space, Not Competition, drives Evolution
8-24-2010


There is another intriguing story this evening in Daily Tech.com. It seems some upstart PhD candidate at the University of Bristol is turning paleontology on its ear with a “renegade theory” that has the entire club in an uproar.
Sarda Sahney, after re-examining the fossil record (really? All of it? I’m impressed) with several other people, including her senior advisor, is proposing that the driving force behind evolution is available space, rather than competition. Ever since Darwin, scientists have assumed that competition among species is what pushed the changes in species. But Ms. Sahney believes otherwise.

Here comes our second relevant quote of the day!

Ms. Sahney and her group's principle investigator, Professor Mike Benton, examined the fossil record and came to the conclusion that organisms made the biggest leaps when they were exposed to an uncolonized space -- somewhere devoid of competition.

Without going into any detail as to how this process might work, (because, I’m guessing, they have no idea) she sees the increase in time and safety presented by areas empty of other species, as the prime mechanism for large and faster evolutionary jumps. Of course lots of other paleontologists and evolutionary biologists don’t agree. It is risky and unpopular to take any path contrary to Darwin. Professional suicide in fact. (Watch “Expelled” by Ben Stein.)

So now we have the big debate, which will no doubt rage for years. Space or competition. Which in return, I suppose, comes down to pressure, or lack of pressure.
But I’m going to propose a third alternative. I have developed a brave and radical new theory. And why not? I have just as much chance of being right as they do. They may be basing their ideas on one—one-one hundred thousandth of the available fossil record, but I’m basing mine on practical logic. Which is a special and rarified branch of logic having to do with things like balanced meals, rights-of-way, common sense, and UFOlogy.
Here goes. Changes in species occur from neither competition nor empty areas devoid of other species. alterations occur as the result of annual design changes similar to clothing or automobiles. Yearly demographic studies are made which followed trends in popularity, practicality, and cultural considerations. Committees will meet and brain-storm the next models, approve the best ideas, and send them on to marketing. Marketing will look at yearly sales reports, geological and long-term climate trends, and approve or disapprove the new batch of prototypes. Final designs would be sent to tooling and manufacturing, where the new models would be put together, built, made, created, brought to life, recorded, and given stamps of approval from various and sundry government agencies.
From there the new models would be crated and shipped to their chosen locations, released, monitored for quality assurance, and forgotten. A huge wrap party is held, and then the whole process starts over again.
As a side note, the delivery vehicles used, look like massive versions of Douglas DC-8’s. They arrive here after a journey of dozens of light years from an auxiliary industrial complex in the Galactic Confederacy. The CEO of the Earth Fauna and Flora Manufacturing Corporation, or EFFMC, is the former tyrant-ruler Xenu. During his tenure as CEO design considerations were bases primarily on Thetan aesthetics.
Hey, it could happen.