I-MAG STS Corporation
Back in 2005 Quentin Wheeler, a professor of entomology and of plant biology
at Cornell, and Kelly B. Miller (Cornell Ph.D. '01) named a collection of newly
discovered slime mold beetles in the genus
Agathidium.
Besides references to
contemporary American political figures, Agathidium vaderi
was designated
because, like the legendary Dark Lord of the Sith, it had "a broad, shiny,
helmet-like head".
In response to a reader question, we can confirm that there is indeed a Dark
Side to our KUDUS application. What was meant was couldn't an evil
government use KUDUS information for oppressive purposes? A simple
answer of 'yes' overlooks the considerations that
1. evil governments never seem to be very efficient even at being vile.
2. there is anecdotal evidence that suggests the darker a government becomes
the shorter it is around, so there may be some sort of mini-max of suffering.
3. evil governments are often good for other countries - Libya has made
enormous investments nearly everywhere but Libya.
4. it is not trivial to distinguish evil governments from incompetent ones.
5. there are at least TWO quantitative measures of how evil a government is:
the quality of life for citizens and resident who are alive AND how many
people died. A census every ten years or so does a poor job of measuring the
former and absolutely ignores the latter. Any continuous counting must
answer not only who died when and where, but also how and why.