NPPF - Canto One and Two notes

[Jasper Fidget]

Mary Krimmel wrote:
> 
> At 10:59 AM 7/29/03 -0400, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> 
> >Incidentally, juvenile cicadas are called "nymphs", and burrow
> underground
> >for usually 13 or 17 years (depends on species, but always tends to be a
> >primary number for some reason), then lives only 2-6 weeks as an adult.
> 
> You mean prime number, I think. I have read that the "survival of the
> fittest" evolution theories see 13,  17 etc. cycles as clear evidence of
> selection to confound enemies who are on more conventional cycles such as
> 2
> or 4 years. With no other theory in sight, this makes sense to me.

Thank you, yes I meant *prime* number.  It's an interesting idea (and
there's some Nabokovian poetry to 13 year nymphets dodging the clutches of
Humberts shown up a year premature), but I have to wonder -- what makes 2 or
4 more conventional than 3 or 5?  Is this somehow an extension of bilateral
symmetry?  

Jasper