This is weird. So I'm reading an article about the Northern Rock issue. It blames one of the directors who has stood down, a Matt Ridley. And I'm thinking, that's a very familiar name.

And yes, it turns out that it is the same Matt Ridley that is an evolutionary biologist / science writer, author of such famous books as the The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, a hugely influential book about co-evolution, a key concept for the artifical life crowd.



And the article suggests that Ridley's love of evolution's callousness might be to blame for Northern Rock's problems - by allowing companies to take greater risks instead of trying to keep them all safe, Ridley argues that more competitive companies would emerge. Sort of a free-market eugenics - kill off the weak. And then it all went wrong and Northen Rock had to rely on its support network after all, learning the value of ohana in the end.

This post was originally on LiveJournal.