| It might seem odd that an electoral college should choose the Holy Roman Emperor. In the Middle Ages, the eldest son inherited the realm. But that process didn�t always work smoothly. If rivals claimed the throne, it was advisable to have a method, short of war, for settling the succession.
The seven German electors were influential individuals able to help in keeping the peace and with every reason for wanting to do so. One might compare their small group to the UN Security Council of today. That German electoral college functioned for about seven centuries and provided a model for choosing a head of government that was cleverly reworked by the US founding fathers. Although the American version of an electoral college is today badly in need of modernization, it�s also true that our US electoral college has functioned reasonably well for more than two centuries, even during the US Civil War. In the Middle East and western Asia, countries typically contain religious, ethnic, and tribal groups that can cause instability when any given group possessing sufficient strength feels that it's being treated badly. Now, it's important to have one person in any country as head of government--to promote a sense of national identity and unity. Electoral college systems for choosing that head of the government could reduce instability and violence. And use of electoral colleges wouldn�t require that democracy be completely sacrificed. Perhaps in a given country half the electors could be ethnic, religious, or tribal leaders, while remaining electors would be selected by an election with universal suffrage. As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what�s needed there is an official tasked with the job of making peace, who�s chosen by a combined Israeli-Palestinian electorate. Here, too, an electoral college might prove useful. The chosen official could perhaps be called the �Bi-ethnic Disputes Ombudsman�-- since an appellation of �Holy Semitic Emperor� might be considered too grandiose. One real obstacle to the above scenario coming to pass is that armies of men would be thrown out of work with the advent of peace--along with a smaller army of diplomats. Even so, it may be that peace will come to the Middle East. That�s because of pressure exerted by the many other nations who�d stand to gain along with individuals, including Israeli and Palestinian civilians and a multitude of other civilians in that broader region now experiencing echoing hostilities. And, reader, we want to be your one-stop shopping place for solutions to social ills. Elsewhere on this site we've sketched reforms for corporate structure. It would be possible to put more people to work and to use their abilities more effectively than at present. Businesses thus restructured could absorb and divert the attention and energy of men (and sometimes women) now engaged in plotting havoc. [ 8 ] Simian vs. Human Origin of HIV Let's return now to what seem to have been the earliest of all patriarchs, those all-male viruses. Here we want to apply theme development from earlier sections to a paper, �AIDS as a Zoonosis: Scientific and Public Health Implications.� It was in Science 28 January 2000, page 607. The authors were Beatrice H. Hahn, George M. Shaw, Kevin M. De Cock, and Paul M. Sharp. This is an excellent paper in many respects. It contains a great deal of information and presents a particular point of view quite effectively. But there were some ideas that don�t seem credible to us. Early in the paper it's said that, �Humans are not the natural hosts of HIV-1.... Instead these viruses have entered the human population as a result of zoonotic, or cross-species, transmission.� This statement might conceivably represent another example of the Law of Organizational Constraint. (See Seciton 2) A fellow AIDS researcher, Dr. Robert C. Gallo, had advanced cross-species transmission in the �80s. His colleagues, working with him in his area of research, may have later felt constrained professionally from too radical a departure from his position. Gallo thought that HIV-1 originated in the African green monkey and then infected humans. The writers of the paper under consideration also think HIV-1 crossed species, but that it originated in chimps. So, fellow-researcher, Gallo�s, original idea has been modified, but not entirely discarded. Figure 1 of their paper (click left to view) shows a supposed evolutionary tree of virus evolution. HIV from humans and SIVs from chimpanzees are shown as having evolved from a common SIV ancestor. "SIV" stands for "simian immunodeficiency virus." As noted in Sec. 6, any evolutionary tree involving viruses must conform to certain topological requirements. The tree shown in Fig. 1 of their paper doesn't do that. Specifically, where is the female moiety in their scheme of things? In my view, what they�ve done is similar to showing the evolution of human males and chimpanzee males from a common primate male ancestor--but leaving out the females of both species. CONTINUE |
| Could human males and chimpanzee males have evolved from a common ancestor in lines of descent in which females played no role whatsoever? |
| As explained below, electoral colleges can provide a compromise between democracy and government by ethnic, religious, or tribal leaders. |
