Hyde Park is Darwinian and Naturalistic

Hyde Park is f@#%ing gigantic.  The side that neighbors my area is behind the Queen's Gate and the Victoria and albert memorial.  Yesterday, I brought a half loaf of bread to feed the swans and made my way to the park.  I got to see a ton of birds and witness natural selection in action.  Yeah me!  Let me explain...

There's a moderately sized manmade pond in Hyde Park that fosters a fairly diverse community of birds.  In the same way blood in the water creates a shark frenzy, it took only a couple pieces of bread thrown to attract every bird in the area.  I was suddenly the center of attention.  I have to confess- I was a little weary of the swans.  They're large and imposing and I don't trust their depth perception.  I'm lucky to still have all my fingers.  anyway, the bit on Darwinism- each bird had its own way of getting bread amidst the scrum with varying degrees of success.

The ducks were wily.  Their bright, beautiful feathers were disarming, but it would be a mistake to confuse elegance with weakness as the ducks attacked the other birds with great zeal and violent hatred.  The tiny birds (for lack of identification) were extraordinary.  It was windy outside and these birds could still fly up and catch the bread before it reached the larger birds on the ground.  They were my favorite.

The blackbirds were even more menacing than the ducks.  Possessing no extraordinary ability, they used intimidation to get the bread.  If you subscribe to the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth, many of these birds were probably mafia henchmen in a previous life.  Finally, the pidgeons were the last major group of birds represented and had the least success at securing the bread.  This didn't surprise me, though.  Pidgeons, unlike other birds, have become very adept at living amongst humans so, natually, they scavenge for dropped food in public places.

Unfortunately there were some birds who simply did not have the means to feed.  Here this example of evolution might not be to adam Smith's "invisible hand" so much as to Joseph Schumpter's model of "creative destruction," whereby we accustom ourselves to certain amont of natural failure, taking into account the pitilessness of nature.  It was interesting day.  I'll surely go back again soon.

Barclay Bikes are sweet!

As some of you may or may not know, mes parents came to London last week for eight days of adventure and cultural enrichment.  Naturally, given my mother's love for the arts and my father's lust for knowledge, we went to a lot of museums and sites around the city (more on that later).  One minor treat was our biking excursions complements of Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme.  Since July of last year, there are over 300 docking stations and kiosks throughout central London in which bikes can be rented for cheap (~1 pound/24 hours).

After nearly a whole semester of the tube travel (which can be quite cumbersome at select hours), blazing my own trail on a bike was refreshingly novel.  Riding at unsafe speeds and worrying my mother was only a plus.  Yet, consistent with England's preternatural insistence on inefficiency, the actual rental process was very frustrating especially to my father who has an unusually high standard for customer service and whose bout with extinct big box retailer Linens 'n Things still lives on in infamy.

Anyway, I'm straying from the point.  I love the bikes!  There's a station outside of my flat in South Kensington and I've been biking two or three times since my parent's departure, most recently to Hyde Park.