The peacock's tail

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Nicholas Gruen
Posted in IT and Internet, Blogs TNG, Climate Change

Well it's not that beautiful, but then lots of bird's tails are not that beautiful. But make a few simple evolutionary rules and somewhere amazing things happen.  Like this website on accommodation in Chester that thinks that if it republishes Paul Frijter's post on engineering solutions to climate change, that it will (presumably) work it's way up Google's rankings.  Presumably there's some method in it. Anyway, it even acknowledges where it plagiarised the content so I guess you can't complain.

3 Comments

  1. Nabakov
    February 16, 2010

    Speaking of the Peacock's Tail theory (which always struck me as a ponderous evolutionary biology version of Stephen Potter's oneupmanship) has it occurred to anyone the real reason for such a display was that so they would be fed and protected by primates looking for nice oneupmanship lawn decorations?

    Tony Shaffer (who wrote The Wicker Man and Sleuth) and Diane Cilento used to keep a bunch of 'em at their FNQ estate Karnak.

    When I asked Tony why, he said "Well it's not for their singing." Now that's oneupmanship.

    As is this comment.

  2. Tel
    February 20, 2010

    Of course someone has to nitpick. If they acknowledged the source then it can't be plagiarised by definition.

    Copyright license is quite another matter again, the "Noncommercial" clause could indeed also sting Troppo because of the occasional advertisements that pop up here now and then (difficult to draw a clean line on commercial / noncommercial activity).

  3. Nicholas Gruen
    February 20, 2010

    Good point Tel as to whether we're a commercial outfit - we're not of course, but I take your point about the ads.

    Btw, at least IIRC Jacques chose the CC licence himself. Personally I'd prefer the most liberal licence.