Friday, April 22, 2005
Sadistic Little Collectivists
I've never trusted ants. Although I deeply appreciated how Douglas Hofstadter used the little collectivists as a metaphor for the epiphenomena of consciousness, I never could get past the essentially creepy communism of the crawlies. Chalk up another point to intuition. Scientists recently discovered a species of Amazon ants that catches fellow insects using a specially constructed trap akin to a medieval rack. I bet the wee little reds make each victim denounce its family before they execute it, too. Bastards.
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You ever played Sim Ant? It's theoretically in the line of games that included Sim City, except instead of a city you rule your burgeoning society of black ants, bent on overthrowing the evil monarchical humans in their home, and defeating the menace of the red ants. Your only asset is that you can immediately "individualize" yourself to a single ant (Sort of like Agent Smith from the matrix) and take personal control.
You can download it (it's a very old game) from :
http://amiga.emucamp.com/simant.htm
"I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords."
It's so bizarre that I just this morning sat down at my computer and found two ants milling about on my desk. I thought, "Great, it's that time of year again." And here you are, talking about ants. They are not my friends, the ants.
Tom,
You forgot to tie this to Earth Day as a reminder of how sweet and peaceful nature is.
do you want to see a really sadistic but kinda funny game? i feel guilty posting the link, but you have to see it for at least the creativity. you basically are killing people (ants) with a giant magnifying glass. i know, sounds so wrong doesn't it? hee
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/antcity.html
sk
Apparently ants consist of 10% of the animal mass on earth. Humans another 10%. In terms of total mass we don't beat ants and in terms of population we aren't even close. I believe this *proves* communism works.
haha Ben, communism works among ants whose sole purpose in life is to please the queen bee. the same cannot be said about the human race. one of the lone standing communist states, N. Korea is a backwards starving nation partially b/c of communism; mainly b/c of dictator Kim. Compare that too nearby countries like S. Korea and Japan.
sk
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