Two Great Articles

One in The Economist about the link between Beauty and Success:

Dr Berggren's team looked at almost 2,000 candidates in Finnish elections. They asked foreigners (mainly Americans and Swedes) to examine the candidates' campaign photographs and rank them for beauty. Lo and behold, the more beautiful candidates, as ranked by people who knew nothing of Finland's internal politics, tended to have been the more successful.

And another in the Washington Post about behavior contagion (i.e. herding):

Psychologist Stanley Milgram had a volunteer stand stock still on a busy New York sidewalk and look up at the sky. About one in every 25 passersby stopped to look up, too... When Milgram and his colleagues assembled a group of 18 volunteers to simultaneously look up at nothing in particular, nearly one in two passersby looked up to see what was going on, snarling traffic within moments.

Both are worth a look, and both came via MindHacks.

Man As Industrial Palace

Boingboing.net had a post today about a 20s era German poster depicting the human body as a chemical factory. It's hard to get a sense from the smaller version, but the full-sized image is very cool and detailed. I recently saw a copy at the Modernism exhibition at the Corcoran, but was disappointed that they didn't have any for sale at the museum shop.

Tyrannosaurus Cow

In what totally reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, paleontologists have discovered a new, cowlike dinosaur. NYT has the scoop here. They really could have come up with a cooler name though...

The researchers reported yesterday that the dinosaur, named Nigersaurus taqueti, had a short neck, delicate bones and a habitual head posture pointed directly toward the ground. This was a ground-level browser like modern cows.

An Economist's Guide to Love

What do you get when you mix psychologists, economists and speed-dating? No, it's not CW's latest reality show (though it totally should be), it's an interesting study on what people *actually* look for in dating partners. Slate has the story here, but you can find the actual study here. The results are less that surprising.

We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner's beauty, when choosing, than women did.

By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women's choices as men's. It isn't exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter—but only up to a point.

When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.

Swarm Intelligence: Part II

Here's another article about swarm behavior, this time from National Geographic. This one goes into more detail on the various types of behavior exhibited by swarms, including honeybees, groups of fish, and caribou.

That's how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No ant sees the big picture. No ant tells any other ant what to do. Some ant species may go about this with more sophistication than others. (Temnothorax albipennis, for example, can rate the quality of a potential nest site using multiple criteria.) But the bottom line, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Oxford and Princeton Universities, is that no leadership is required. "Even complex behavior may be coordinated by relatively simple interactions," he says.

Swarm Intelligence: Part I

NYTimes had a great article today about swarm behavior, how complex behavior and decision-making can arise through interactions between simple individual actors. The article doesn't go into a lot of detail, but it's a good introduction to the topic.

By studying army ants — as well as birds, fish, locusts and other swarming animals — Dr. Couzin and his colleagues are starting to discover simple rules that allow swarms to work so well. Those rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism.

Deciphering those rules is a big challenge, however, because the behavior of swarms emerges unpredictably from the actions of thousands or millions of individuals.

What Would That Make the Male Term - Panini?

A friend just convinced me that I needed to post this ground-breaking NYT article about the recent rise of a certain euphemism for female gentalia, "vajayjay". According to him, the article is perfect for this blog because 1) it relates to linguistics, 2) it cites Stephen Pinker, and 3) it involves private parts.

The article also includes these two brilliant insights:

As Joel McHale, the host of “The Soup,” put it: “It’s not derogatory. It’s not ‘You’re being such a vajayjay right now.’ It’s kind of a sweet thing.”

“Vajayjay,” he said, “is like your good buddy.”

and,

"There is a black — Southern especially — naming tradition, which is to have names like Ray Ray and Boo Boo and things like that,”Dr. McWhorter said. “It sounds warm and familiar and it almost makes the vagina feel like a little cartoon character with eyes that walks around."

(thanks Ben)

I Love Monkey Studies

Another delightful monkey study over at NYTimes.com, about how capuchin monkeys have been found to exhibit cognitive dissonance--rationalizing neutral or poor decisions by unconsciously revising our mental preferences. They did the study with M&Ms, but they've also found the same tendencies in children (with stickers) and adults (with wedding gifts).

Once a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M’s — say, red, blue and green — he was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue.

VS Ramachandran and the Neurology of Self-Awareness

A friend forwarded me a great article today from Edge.org, in which noted neuropsychologist V.S. Ramchandran explains the emergence of self-awareness through specific brain circuitry. I've only had a chance to skim the article so far but it looks very interesting. Here he describes the initial discovery of the specific neural networks possibly responsible for awareness of the self:

These were dubbed "mirror neurons" or "monkey-see-monkey-do" neurons. This was an extraordinary observation because it implies that the neuron (or more accurately, the network which it is part of) was not only generating a highly specific command ("reach for the nut") but was capable of adopting another monkey's point of view. It was doing a sort of internal virtual reality simulation of the other monkeys action in order to figure out what he was "up to". It was, in short, a "mind-reading" neuron.

There's a Lot More to Life Than Being Really, Really Good Looking

And Naomi intends to find out what that is.

Reason Magazine's Hit & Run blog has picked up on a brilliant new trend in British foreign policy: sending out supermodels. Apparently Naomi Campbell just met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And, in 1998, she and Kate Moss met Fidel Castro in what she described as a "very spiritual" encounter. Indeed.

Well I, for one, think that this is the first well-heeled step down the runway to world peace, and that the U.S. needs to respond in-kind immediately, by shipping Tyra Banks to North Korea.

But Apparently it IS the Happiest Place On Earth

While I was searching (unsuccessfully) for an image to accompany the last post, I came across the happiest known picture of North Korea's Dear Leader. Enjoy.

Not Such A Small World After All...

Apparently the original It's A Small World ride at Disneyland is being renovated to accommodate increasingly overweight American bodies. How ironic.

The problem, quite simply, is that the flume that the boats ride in, and the boats themselves, were designed and built in 1963 on the assumption that the male adult riders would average 175 pounds and the women about 135, which they pretty much did at the time. Alas, those figures are as outdated today as the Rocket to the Moon ride.

The Small World ride now must accommodate adults who frequently weigh north of 200 pounds, which it often cannot do. Increasingly, overweighted boats get to certain points in the ride and bottom out, becoming stuck in the flume.

Russian Urban Photography

I just found a bunch of amazing photos by a Russian photographer, Mira Lukavaya. Lukavaya takes amazing shots of abandoned and decaying buildings, factories and churches around Russia. His photos are incredible, and his site is well worth a look.

String Theory In Two Minutes Or Less

Discover Magazine recently held a contest (hosted by my favorite science writer Brian Greene) in which viewers submitted videos explaining string theory in under two minutes. Click below to see the winner.

More About Memory

Mind Hacks, a very good blog about neuroscience and psychology, recently had a link to a great article by Joshua Foer in National Geographic about two extremes of memory; one person who can accurately remember nearly every day of her life and another who has lost nearly all of his adult memories--as well as the ability to create new ones.

EP wears a metal medical alert bracelet around his left wrist. Even though it's obvious what it's for, I ask him anyway. He turns his wrist over and casually reads it. "Hmm. It says memory loss."

It's fascinating to think about what a huge role memory plays in determining how we experience the world around us. Lose our memories and we lose a large part of what makes us who we are.

Not Your Average Pair of Heels...

According to Style.com, shoe design-god Christian Louboutin and David Lynch are teaming up for an exhibition at the Gallerie du Passage in Paris. Shoe fetishists, click here for the scoop, but be careful, it is somewhat NSFW.

Ah, The Irony...

I just came across a great New York Magazine review of the book 'How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read', by Pierre Bayard. Aside from it being a great title, it is also a very funny review (and has the added irony of having been written by a reviewer who didn't actually read the book). My favorite part:

Today I’m proficient in such feints as the stretched truth (“It’s funny, I’ve never actually finished that,” I’ll volunteer about War and Peace, of which I’ve read only the first paragraph), the misdirection (“Have you read Gravity’s Rainbow?” “You know what’s always bothered me about Pynchon?”), and, on very rare occasions, the enthusiastic flat-out lie (“Did you finish Brideshead Revisited?” “Yes! Yes, I really did!”).

"Follow your dreams, except for that one where you’re naked at work."

A whole slew of articles about sleep in the NYT yesterday about various scientific theories of sleep. In my opinion, the most interesting is this one, about the similarities between sleeping patterns in birds and humans. Did you know that pigeons also sleep throughout the night and frequently take naps during the day? Or that birds can sleep with one side of their brain while the other side remains awake, watching for predators? Well now you know.

There was also a longer article about the state of various scientific studies about sleep (in brief: we don't know why we do it, but we think it has something to do with consolidating memories), and one about the theory of why we have nightmares (as a way of dealing with intense memories, or something). And as if that wasn't enough for you, here's an article with various quotes about sleep, including one of my favorite quotes by a particle physicist, "A friend of mine once dreamed he was an elementary particle. Nothing came of it."

As someone who frequently dreams of being a superhero, I'm glad to see Science shedding some light on this important subject.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain: Part II

Over at Freakonomics.blog they have done a follow up to the spinning dancer I posted last week, which supposedly tells you whether you are more right-brain (touchy-feely hippy) or left-brained (cold unfeeling scientist). Apparently the majority of people see the dancer spinning clockwise (as I did), but based on responses to the blog it appears that this correlates with typically left-brained people.

Then again, it might just be a dumb spinning dancer.

Just Go for the Alpha Male

More invaluable information from Slate.com, this time about what to do if you are attacked by a group of angry monkeys. For those of you who haven't heard, the Deputy Mayor of New Delhi died this weekend after falling off his balcony during a attack by rhesus monkeys.

The proposed solution to the growing monkey problem? Import groups of larger langur monkeys to go after the smaller rhesus monkeys. I can't see any way this could possibly fail.

Orwell the Prophet

I just stumbled upon a bunch of posts by Emma Larkin, author of Finding George Orwell in Burma. I hadn't realized how deep Orwell's connection to Burma was:

Orwell's mother was born in Burma, at the height of the British raj, and Orwell was fundamentally shaped by his experiences in Burma as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. When Orwell died, the novel-in-progress on his desk was set in Burma.

When Larkin quietly asked one Burmese intellectual if he knew the work of George Orwell, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, "Ah, you mean the prophet!"

Larkin recently returned from a few weeks in Burma and has been blogging about the situation. Very disturbing.

Sex, Sex and More Sex

A friend forwarded me a couple of interesting articles from the Economist this morning: one about the apparent link between polygyny and shorter lifespans in males; and another about a titillating (had to, sorry) study done recently that showed that female lap dancers apparently earn nearly twice as much when they are ovulating than when they are on the Pill (link to full study here).

These, in turn, reminded me of an earlier study which showed an inverse relationship between brain size and testes size in bats (which has since been seen in primates and other species as well).

All jokes aside, I think it's fascinating to think about how reproductive strategies influence biological development and behavior. We have finite resources to put towards lifespan vs. reproduction, testes vs. brain, and where we wound on that spectrum depended in large part on how much hanky-panky went on between our ancestors.

What Do Burritos And Iraq Have In Common?

According to this Reuters new story they're both words most likely to be googled from the United States.

I've always thought that Google's national search results were fascinating; they provide a glimpse into the collective thoughts of an entire nation. Who knew that Italy was most likely to google "viagra", or that the Philippines was the country searching the most for "love"? Some results are less surprising (Ireland searching for "hangover" for example) while some seem downright disturbing, like Pakistan searching for both "Taliban" and "Terrorism" or the fact that Mexico tops the world in searches for "Britney Spears".

Insert M.C. Hammer Joke Here

As a less-than-satisfied Comcast subsriber myself, I love this story in the Washington Post today about a 75-year-old woman who took out her frustration the old fashioned way: with a hammer.

So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said: "C'mon, honey, we're going to Comcast."

Did you try to stop her, Mr. Shaw?

"Oh no, no," he says.

Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!

"They cuffed me right then," she says.

I imagine the $345 fine was well-worth the satisfaction.

"Our connection isn't just that we met through an irregular verb..."

Another fantastic article about Stephen Pinker (my last for a while, I promise) and his girlfriend, Trinity philosophy professor Rebecca Goldstein. In it they talk about philosophical theories of language, atheism, Spinoza, the mind-brain question, and how they found nerd love.

Plus It's Way Shorter Than The Illustrated Wealth of Nations

Not much going on this morning, but here's a link to an illustrated version of Hayek's Road to Serfdom. Now the moment I have kids, the classical liberal indoctrination can start. Boo-ya.

Best NYTimes Columnist Ever

I'm not a huge fan of Maureen Dowd, but yesterday she won some major points by inviting Steven Colbert to write her column. It is hilarious. My favorite quote: The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.

Project Implicit

I've been reading Malcom Gladwell's Blink over the weekend, a fantastic book about how our subconscious is able to make snap decisions and judgments--often more accurately than our conscious decisions. Like his previous book, Tipping Point, Blink is full of interesting ideas, anecdotes and studies.

One of these is a project at Harvard designed to measure our unconscious attitudes towards various groups. The tests only take 5-10 mins but are designed to show whether we have a positive or negative connotation of race, religion, age, etc. I took the Race Test, and apparently have a slight unconscious preference for white faces over black faces. I haven't yet taken the Native American test...

Right Brain, Left Brain?

Interesting post on Freakonomics today, a spinning dancer who apparently changes direction based on whether you are left- or right-brain oriented. Not sure if it actually has anything to do with dominant brain structures, but it is interesting that the motion can be interpreted different when, for me, the dancer is *clearly* moving clockwise. I'm going to try looking at it this afternoon after a couple of hours of painting to see if that changes anything...

Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Or Don't.

I am slowly but surely developing more of an appreciation for baseball. Doping scandals, racist mascots and seventh-inning stretches aside (honestly, any sport that needs to lets its viewers stand up and stretch to wake up has some serious problems), I'm starting to like the dynamic between the pitcher and the batter. Reminds me of an Old West-style showdown, with everything coming down to the split second of the pitch and the swing.

But try as I might, I just can't seem to get into the baseball post-season. For those of you who share my complete indifference to the great American Pastime, here's a good crib sheet from Slate that will give you the basics. It won't make you care, but it'll make you sound like you care.

Steven Pinker is F***ing Awesome

I just came across this article in The New Republic, in which Steven Pinker explores why curse words are so viscerally powerful. Pinker includes what may be my favorite description of an expletive ever, "gynecological-flagellative term for uxorial dominance". Took me a second to guess what that was...

(via Mindhacks)

Welcome

The idea for this blog has been bouncing around for quite a while, ever since I realized that I was spending far too much time collecting articles and links and posting them to my away message in Google Chat. There is no overarching theme to this blog, this is just a place for me to put down all the random things I come across in my normal web browsing. Some topics that I expect to arise include politics, physics, philosophy, psychology; as well as subject not beginning with the letter P, sports, fashion, photography (oops), etc.

So welcome to the show!