Sep 26 2009
(Recycled material – first posted on 8/8/08)
“Hearing things” is not an uncommon experience. Consider tales of haunted houses, etc. But there are at least two classes of people hearing things that are becoming better understood. And with that progress comes a better understanding of how the human mind functions and dys-functions, if you will.
Sep 25 2009
Nature is often described as a web of life. Which kinda sounds placid and harmonious. Like a butterfly feeding on a flower and transporting its gametes to another blossom. Thank you. No — thank you.
But sometimes nature seems to me like a free-for-all down at the World Wrestling Federation Headquarters. Except organisms really do get hurt in nature.
We generally don’t notice butterflies crippled by parasites. They tend to get eaten (“recycled”) too rapidly. And we also tend to gloss over carnivores having a bloody feast of herbivores. Etc. We say, “the lions are weeding out the weak and old.” As if lions were doing the earth a big favor. My guess is that carnivores opt for the younger and healthier whenever they can. More nutritious.
Certainly, life is a web in terms of species interaction and inter-dependence. But to whitewash the web so it is suitable for the sentiments of children . . . . save that for children.
Sep 25 2009
These two variables are linked: 1) No dad in the house, 2) the age of first sexual intercourse in children. Of course, whenever a link is discovered speculation begins on how the two variables are connected. As for children having sex sooner when there is no dad in the house, there have been a number of mechanisms proposed.
Without a socially conservative dad around, children become more sexually liberal.
Without a dad in the house, girls will fill the void by seeking male companions, and we all know what men want. (But what about boys?)
Etc.
New research has identified a possible mechanism that is so straightforward and simple, it nearly caused my to slap my forehead and cry, “Well, d’uh!”
Jane Mendle, from the University of Oregon, and a team of researchers collected data from over 1000 biologically related teenagers. The data included sociological and personality factors, as well as DNA. Their finding -
The more genes the children shared, the more similar their ages of first intercourse—regardless of whether or not the children personally had an absent father. This finding, the researchers say, suggests that environmental theories don’t fully explain the puzzle. Instead, genetic influence can help us understand the tie between fathers’ absence and early sex.
That kinda makes sense. Children with dads who wander beyond the family and don’t come back, so to speak, may have “wandering” genes themselves. Interesting.
Sep 24 2009
Oh sure, leaves of grass seem placid and beautiful from the human-eye perspective. But what about up-close? The above is not a blade of grass but . . . What? Answer below the fold.
Sep 24 2009
“It has already been shown that allogrooming can be used as an appeasement gesture in lower primates, and this incident [among chimpanzees] seemed to reflect a currying of favour with the leader by a subordinate.”
- John Sparks (39)
To appease means to pacify and/or satisfy, to please by putting an individual at ease. Less stress means relatively more pleasure. Yet human beings don’t physically groom higher ranking individuals. So how do they put the relatively greater at ease? Maybe much like the chimpanzee sometimes does.
“Apparently, subjects inferred that their former opponent was more likely to renew aggression if she had not grunted to them than if she had. Grunts seemed to serve a reconciliatory function.” (40)
Grunts. Nonverbal vocalizations “say a lot.” Verbal ones say even more. As we will see in subsequent posts, grooming among primates frequently entails a vocal element.
Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. (Psalms 47:6)
Sep 24 2009
Religion is a horrible variable. Terrible. As is atheism, to a lesser extent. Why? Because they are general (nonspecific), imprecise terms — particularly religion – referring not to a single easily measurable attribute but to a potential grab-bag of traits and behaviors. When using these terms it is easy to infer that a god and/or the supernatural is central to the issue. But that’s not the case. Absolutely not, as I will argue. The use of these terms often disguise the real issues.
Example #1
As Tom Flynn pointed out in his Free Inquiry article, “It’s Amazing What You Can Find By Looking” (Oct/Nov 2009), for years it has been assumed that terms such as religious and non-religious tell us something important about people. In a study into life satisfaction he parses, Flynn notes that it is not bald belief in a god or a lack of belief in a god that matters, but the strength of belief. It seems that people with strong convictions are happier than those without. (Do confusion and ambivalence contribute to less satisfying states?) This is not terribly surprising, as beliefs/convictions are cognitive events/characteristics that certainly can and do influence other aspects of human psychology (particularly emotion and behavior).
Example #2
Over at ScienceDaily I recently ran into this news release:
Teenage Birth Rates Higher In More Religious States
Can states be religions? No. People are religious. How are people religious? That is a very important question. In fact, that’s the nut-meat that needs to be better exposed. The lead sentence is more precise but still questionable.
Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion.
“Teen mothers” — good, we know what those are, no vagueness here. “Controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion” — good. Those can be measured. But what of the “religious beliefs” part. What does that truly mean in terms of real-world attributes?
Interestingly, the article’s closing paragraph contains a “speculation” that is less speculative than the use of religious as a variable.
[I]f we may speculate on the most probable explanation, we conjecture that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
Communities, contraception, sexual intercourse . . . these are real world properties that can be isolated and measured.
I have long held that in studies on religion and belief, there should always be secular controls. Without it we can’t know if we are really measuring any strong belief (or community involvement) vs. weaker or no beliefs (or lack of community involvement). If those non-super-natural characteristics are truly being measured, these are the terms we should use. The purely religious part might just be fully irrelevant. Real things.
Good scientists keep religion and other vague terms with other-world connotations out of their work. They stick to variables that can be isolated and measured.
Sep 23 2009
Would an MRI of my brain help me understand why I find photos such as the above appealing?
If the regions of my brain associated with hunger and eating are active when viewing nature photos, that might suggest one thing. While if the active region(s) were associated with sex, that would mean another. (Namely, call the funny farm, we’ve got an emergency admittance!)
Guessing here: maybe the areas of my brain associated with spatial explorations become active. 3-d navigation. Or the “berry-gathering” areas. Or?
Frankly, I have no idea. But I am curious.
Sep 23 2009
Recent research suggests that “comfort foods” aren’t what they have been assumed to be. In a nutshell, the research -
[Did] not say that comfort foods are not enjoyable, but rather that we don’t seem to seek them out when we think we do. Contrary to our expectations, comfort foods appear to be chosen more often in comfortable times.”
In other words, we don’t turn to comfort foods when we are uncomfortable and needing to comfort ourselves. Instead, we may tend to consume them when in already comfortable settings.
Personally, I could never relate to the expression “comfort food.” All food makes my gut more comfortable, so to speak. Is the category instead a sort of euphemism for “familiar food”? Food that goes down easy? Foods associated with family/culture? Hmm . . .
Sep 23 2009
Open-minded folk respect the unknown. Of course, there may be a fine line between slack-jawed incredulity (if I can think it, it is possible) and knee-jerk nay saying (that’s unusual, it has to be b.s.).
While some skeptics can be deservedly accused of disrespecting the unknown (“the” unknown — as if it were a special, meaning-full monolith) by their overstatement of the known, I believe it is the woo-masters and true believers who most disrespect it. How? By not accepting the unknown for what it simply is: unknown. Instead, they project all sorts of highly speculative or outright bogus ideas upon it. Because you can’t explain it, my explanation has validity.
Wrong. To respect the unknown is to tolerate the condition of not knowing. To respect the unknown is to look at a fill-in-the-blank question and to leave it blank.
For an example of the right way to respect the unknown, consider this title to a recent science news release:
Exotic Life Beyond Life? Looking For Life As We Don’t Know It
“Life as we don’t know it.” Brilliant. The article title expresses the recognition that any preconceptions about life and life forms may not be the best guide to finding something new.
Sep 22 2009
Kids, this could be you. Chase your dreams fervently enough and they will come true.
Will they really? On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t hold your breath. You could do your very best and still fall short. Nothing personal.
I was mildly startled by President’s Obama’s recent speech last week. He told our nation’s schoolchildren that not everyone can grow up to be a basketball star or rapper. (Had he forgot his cheer leading uniform at home?)
And why not?! If children dream big enough, it will happen, right? Maybe not. A wide-bodied kid with a deficit of height won’t get very far on the basketball, no matter how many hours he/she dreams and shoots hoops. Sorry. Sometimes the truth ain’t pretty.
As for becoming an astronaut, sure, dream and strive to your heart’s content, providing you find the means to the end themselves fulfilling. Don’t bank on reaching the stars, however. Only the very few, very talented, and perhaps very fortunate, reach ultimate dreamland.
The rest of us are consigned to sit in the bleachers and applaud. Which ain’t such a bad thing.
[photo thanks to NASA]
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