If you have not ever played or seen the computer games Sim City or Sim Life and you are looking for a great way to see an illustration of the dominoe effect, check them out. Might be a good way to enlighten DGIs who have difficulty seeing the systemic nature of the problem. The player essentially builds their own City or Habitat, adding and/or removing different key elements of them respectively and watching the results. Basic example from Sim Life: you can build a pen for a particular animal species, you add vegetation species, water, food source. BUT if you don't add females, you species will die. You add females and they reproduce, you must also increase their food/water resources within that pen or they will start dying as the population increases. Also, for those trying to educate their children, these games are great!

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), February 01, 1999

Answers

Sounds like fruit fly experiments to me.

-- me (justme@aol.com), February 01, 1999.

Other Lisa:

Possibly a good idea if simulations are realistic. Are there playable scenarios where the population increases beyond the equilibrium carrying capacity and then results in a major die-off to well below an equilibrium population? (I.e., likely human scenario WITH OR WITHOUT Y2K problems).

-- A (A@AisA.com), February 02, 1999.

Me: I think you can add a fruitfly species to habitats in Sim Life, the number of different plant and animal species numbers in the hundreds.

A: To answer your question, yes on a basic-medium level.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), February 02, 1999.