All is one with one

Here's a book seen on a colleague's book shelf.  That's right, the title is E Pluribus Unicorn.  I forgot to take a picture of the blurb on the back, but apparently it's a collection of short stories.  The author, Sturgeon, also wrote a couple episodes of the original Star Trek series and may have been a least partly the inspiration for the character Kilgore Trout, also a science fiction writer with a fishy last name, in Kurt Vonnegut's novels.

Also, here's a paleontologist with a squid on his head.

Sympatric Speciation in Humans

I here report a gene complex responsible for sympatric speciation in Humans.  The genetic basis of metabolism relating to the deposition of subdermal fat has resulted in a behavioral  The range of expression of this gene in conjunction with environment will be referred to here as fatness.  The humans are subjected to environmental conditions so that there is complete expression of potential fatness.  Sexual selection on the parameters of 'perceived hotness' and 'perceived gettability' result in highly assortive mating.  Generally there is a negative correlation between the two parameters.   Both genders choose mates based on the hottest member of the opposite gender that they perceive that they can get.  This therefore involves both outward assessment of others and self assessment.  For example, a hot female will self assess that she is highly desirable and therefore can be very selective.  While one would think that high hotness would correlate to a high number of potential mates, this does not hold.  The reason is that the opposite sex is aware of the very low gettability of the hot individuals and devote their resources more efficiently to more gettable mates.  Because being gettable counteracts hotness deficiency, there is no difference in fitness at the two ends of the gradient.   Furthermore, because selection is acting on hotness and gettability as two mutually exclusive traits, the middle of the distribution is deminishing due to lack of hybrid vigor.  The probability of mating between two individuals varies inversely with the distance between each other on the distribution of fatness and positively with the distance of the pair from the mean.  If they are mating up, then their progeny are more likely to mate up, if down, then down.