September 14, 2002

The Ant Conspiracy

Garrett Moritz is being very silly. What a waste of an expensive education...

So last night I went to the Smith-Holy-Becker "In With the Old, Out With the New" party¹. It was an educational evening, to say the least:

• Julie is engaged! That's one of those things that I think I was supposed to know, but didn't, probably because I was told and then promptly forgot. Don't worry, I covered for myself admirably. Nobody will ever know.
• The famous and delicious combo of putting a hunk of cream cheese in the salsa can trace its lineage directly back to the Becker twins, not Nancy as I had previously thought. So let's see... twenty years of putting up with Pat and Sam, versus the cream cheese and salsa combo. I dunno, I think they'd better pull another ace out of their sleeves pretty soon.
• There is a very simple way to describe how the whole second-cousin-once-removed business works. Cousins share a grandparent, second cousins share a great-grandparent, and so on. As for "once-removed", that just means "how many generational levels do you have to move up or down?" I'm sure this was not news to some of you, but it was a Clarifying Moment for me.

Unfortunately, one thing nobody knew is the weight of a typical (Argentinian) ant. We guessed that one person would weigh about as much as fifty million ants, but that was the best we could do. Strangely, Google reveals only one obscure reference that says in passing, "a million ants weigh a few kilograms." Let's leave aside the fact that the author conflates "mass" and "weight". I'm starting to wonder about the bigger question: could there be some kind of ant conspiracy? How much do ants weigh? How many ants are out there? And what are they up to as they toil in the dark?

Where's E.O.Wilson when you need him?

1. Or is that the other way around? I can't remember.