Two recent articles in TiGS by Gerald Crabtree float the notion that we, as a species, are gradually declining in average intellect because we are accumulating mutations that deleteriously affect brain development or function. The observations that prompted this view seem to be: (i) intellectual disability can be caused by mutations in any one of a very large number of genes; and (ii) de novo mutations arise at a low but steady rate in every new egg or sperm. He further proposes that (iii) genes involved in brain development or function are especially vulnerable to the effects of such mutations. Considered in isolation, these could reasonably lead to the conclusion that mutations reducing intelligence must be constantly accumulating in the human gene pool. Thankfully, these factors do not act in isolation.

If we, as a species, were simply constantly accumulating new mutations, then one would predict the gradual degradation of every aspect of fitness over time, not just intelligence. Indeed, life could simply not be sustained over evolutionary time in the face of such genetic entropy. Fortunately (for the species, although not for all individual members), natural selection is an attentive minder. […]

Whether causally or as a correlated indicator, intelligence is strongly associated with evolutionary fitness, even in current societies. The threat posed by new mutations to the intellect of the species is therefore kept in check by the constant vigilance of selection. Thus, despite ready counter-examples from nightly newscasts, there is no scientific reason to think that we humans are on an inevitable genetic trajectory towards idiocy.

{ Cell | Continue reading }

Member-to-group comparisons are prevalent in everyday life. A person might consider whether one politician would make a better president than other candidates, whether one home is more suitable than other prospective homes on the market, whether one food item is healthier than others, or whether one vacation spot is more desirable than others. In turn, the outcomes of such comparisons have important consequences for a person’s choices, decisions, moods, thoughts, and, ultimately, welfare. Indeed, rational models of choice are predicated on the idea that human beings can maximize their utility by identifying the best and worst options in a choice set.

However, recent work by Klar and his colleagues suggests that people are far from unbiased in their comparisons. Individual members of positively valenced groups (e.g., healthy foods, good politicians) are rated better and individual members of negatively valenced groups (e.g., unhealthy foods, bad politicians) are rated worse than the group average, in defiance of simple mathematical rules stating that the average of the individual members must equal the group average. In one of the first studies demonstrating these nonselective inferiority and superiority biases, Giladi and Klar had shoppers evaluate randomly selected pleasant-smelling or unpleasant-smelling soaps and found that any given pleasant soap was rated better than the rest of the group, and any given unpleasant soap was rated worse than the rest of the group. These effects have since been observed with other object categories, including desirable and undesirable acquaintances, restaurants, social groups, pieces of furniture, hotels, and songs, and thus appear to be highly robust and reliable.

In explaining these nonselective biases, Giladi and Klar proposed that when one member of a positive or negative group is compared with others (e.g., how does good restaurant A compare with other good restaurants B and C?), that member is evaluated against a standard that is one part local (restaurants B and C) and one part general (all other restaurants, including bad ones). Thus, although the member that is being evaluated should be compared only with the normatively appropriate local standard, it is actually compared with a hybrid standard that includes both the local and the general standard. Consequently, almost any member of a positive group will be rated better than others (because the general standard is more negative than the local standard), and almost any member of a negative group will be rated worse than others (because the general standard is more positive than the local standard).

In this article, I propose an additional reason (beyond the confusion of local and general standards) why almost any group member is rated more extremely than others in its group.

{ APS/SAGE | Continue reading }

photo { Lise Sarfati }

The World’s Fastest-Growing Cause of Death Is Pollution from Car Exhaust.

German privacy regulator orders Facebook to end its real name policy.

Why do toddlers bother learning to walk?

Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers.

Dolphins Nicer Than Humans When Forming ‘Cliques.’

Zinc may help treat box jellyfish stings.

Hacker Behind Nude Celebrity Photos Gets 10 Years.

Google’s Gmail Outage Is a Sign of Things to Come.

Following months of congressional pressure, the TSA has agreed to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to study the health effects of the agency’s X-ray body scanners.

This article critically evaluates the relationship between constructing narratives and achieving factual accuracy at trials.

Written like a linguistics textbook, the fourteen-page Web site ran to almost a hundred and sixty thousand words. It documented the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of a language that Quijada had spent three decades inventing in his spare time. Ithkuil had never been spoken by anyone other than Quijada, and he assumed that it never would be…

Your own personal 2012 apocalypse.

How to use toilets in Tenerife.

An expert in synthetic biology explains how people could soon live for centuries.

Superlongevity Without Overpopulation.

Chinese authorities have detained 93 people accused of spreading doomsday rumors and arrested a man who slashed 23 children at a school after he was “psychologically affected” by such predictions.

A kindergarten is being investigated after its so-called “hug fee” caused a backlash from angry parents in China.

Woman in China fined after insulting dog she named after neighbor.

Grad student demonstrates how phones can be turned into listening devices by attackers.

Scientists make fish grow “hands” in experiment that may reveal how fins became limbs.

SoHo, Murray Hill, and the Upper West Side are some of the hottest places in NYC to pick up syphilis.

Office Space Bacterial Abundance and Diversity in Three Metropolitan Areas.

Researchers have developed novel technology to detect the tumors in the body in early stages with the help of nanoparticles.

Have Scientists Found Two Different Higgs Bosons?

Climate Change Tipping Point: Research Shows That Emission Reductions Must Occur by 2020.

Innovations that will change our lives in the next five years. [ibm.com]

The author of the story I’ve described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel.

Louis C.K., Proust Questionnaire.

Mr. Finger. [video]

{‘Instagram’s suicide note.’ | Instagram is changing its terms of use in January }

Man picks up iron instead of telephone.

“There have been no systematic studies of the safety of tattoo inks,” says Howard, “so we are trying to ask—and answer—some fundamental questions.” For example, some tattoos fade over time or fade when they are exposed to sunlight. And laser light is used to remove tattoos. “We want to know what happens to the ink,” says Howard. “Where does the pigment go?” [Thanks Tim]

The American Psychiatric Association: Being transgender is no longer a disorder.

Myers-Briggs is the world’s most widely used personality test and is beloved by Corporate America. But does it actually work?

People live more than a decade longer on average today than they did in 1970, but spend much of these boon years battling diseases like cancer, according to a global health review.

For the first time, a scholarly study has investigated the effects (in an organizational context) of not just one – but four – types of festive headgear.

The web was an interesting and different place before links got monetized, but by 2007 it was clear that Google had changed the web forever, and for the worse. The Web we lost.

The TseTse fly is unique to the African continent and transmits a parasite harmful to humans and lethal to livestock. This paper tests the hypothesis that the presence of the TseTse reduced the ability of Africans to generate an agricultural surplus historically by limiting the use of domesticated animals and inhibiting the adoption of animal-powered technologies. [PDF]

We have past, present and future; we can imagine various time relationships such as imagining some time in the future from the prospective of looking back at it from even further into the future. But we can also abandon identifying a particular time when we imagine. For example we can simulate what it would be like to be in another’s shoes or what it would be like to be in a different place. Instead of time-traveling, we can space-travel or identity-travel. It seems that the evidence so far implies that future and atemporal imagined events are represented similarly. But there are differences between temporal and atemporal imaginings.

{ thoughts on thoughts | Continue reading }

Cops use Taser on woman buying too many iPhones.

Overeating now bigger global problem than lack of food.

Sociophysicists Discover Universal Pattern of Voting Behaviour.

What goes wrong when talks break down. Nonlinear analysis explains how negotiations often fail.

Some people like to have a few close friends, while others prefer a wider social circle that is perhaps less deep. These preferences reflect people’s personalities and individual circumstances — but is one approach to social networks “better” than the other? New research suggests that the optimal social networking strategy depends on socioeconomic conditions.

Nanoscale materials are used in everything from sunscreen to chemical catalysts to antibacterial agents–from the mundane to the lifesaving. 7 ways nanotechnology is changing the world.

110 Predictions For The Next 110 Years.

The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection.

The western style of having both a family name (surname) and a given name (forename or “Christian” name) is far from universal. In many countries it is common for ordinary people to have only one name or mononym.

Indiana Jones Mystery Package.

Fin­ger bis­cuits.

How to Avoid Falling: A Guide for Active Aging and Independence.

‪Chinese Woman Writes With Both Hands Simultaneously in Different Languages‬.

Exreme.

We live in an image society. Since the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, Americans have been awash in a sea of images – in advertisements, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, throughout the visual landscape. We are highly attuned to looks, first impressions and surface appearances, and perhaps no image is more seductive to us than our own personal image. In 1962, the cultural historian Daniel Boorstin observed that when people talked about themselves, they talked about their images. If the flourishing industries of image management — fashion, cosmetics, self-help — are any indication, we are indeed deeply concerned with our looks, reputations, and the impressions that we make. For over a hundred years, social relations and conceptions of personal identity have revolved around the creation, projection, and manipulation of images. […]

In what follows, I want to contemplate one legal consequence of the advent of the image society: the evolution of an area of law that I describe as the tort law of personal image. By the 1950s, a body of tort law – principally the privacy, defamation, publicity, and emotional distress torts4 — had developed to protect a right to control one’s own image, and to be compensated for emotional and dignitary harms caused by egregious and unwarranted interference with one’s self-presentation and public identity. The law of image gave rise to the phenomenon of the personal image lawsuit, in which individuals sued to vindicate or redress their image rights. By the postwar era, such lawsuits had become an established feature of the sociolegal landscape, occupying not only a prominent place on court dockets but also in the popular imagination. The growth in personal image litigation over the course of the 20th century was driven by Americans’ increasing sense of entitlement to their personal images. A confluence of social forces led individuals to cultivate a sense of possessiveness and protectiveness towards their images, which was legitimated and enhanced by the law.

This article offers a broad overview of the development of the modern “image torts” and the phenomenon of personal image litigation.

{ Samantha Barbas/SSRN | Continue reading }

{ Tobias Wong & J.A.R.K. }

Germany plans to slap a fine of up to 25,000 euros on people having sexual relations with pets, but zoophiles plan to fight the move. They say there’s nothing wrong with consensual sex.

A convicted murderer and rapist behind bars concocted a plot to murder and castrate Justin Bieber and his bodyguard.

In October, 3D-printing startup Shapeways opened its New York production facility in Long Island City, Queens, the biggest consumer-focused 3D printing factory in the world.

In 1955, L’Origine du monde was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs. Its new owner was the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

The impact of alcohol in pedestrian trauma.

How to help a fat cat lose weight.

{ Hugh Crawford | Jen Trausch & Eli Fernald }

{ I went to Art Basel and tried to “get” art }

Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally “real”, as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Thanks James }

While risk research focuses on actions that put people at risk, this paper introduces the concept of “passive risk”—risk brought on or magnified by inaction. […]

Avoidance of regret (more precisely “perceived future regret”/ “anticipated regret”) is a major factor in most inaction biases. Support for this idea can be found in Norm Theory which claims that inactions are usually perceived as “normal”, in contrast to actions, which are viewed as “abnormal” and therefore elicit more counterfactual thinking and regret. People regret actions (with bad outcomes) more than inactions, so it is clear why people who try to avoid regret prefer inaction in situations when actions may lead to unwanted outcomes. However, in passive risk taking behavior we refer to situations in which actions can only lead to positive/neutral outcomes, so regret avoidance cannot be the cause of inaction in these instances. People do not avoid cancer tests because they fear they might feel regret after having the tests done. […]

Procrastination is defined as “the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort.” It may seem as though passive risk taking is essentially procrastination, but there is a major difference: the procrastinator knows that eventually he will have to complete the task at hand, the decision to act has already been established—it is only the actual doing that is delayed. In passive risk taking people decide “not to act,” or in some cases “not act for now.”

{ Judgment and Decision Making | Continue reading }

photos { Paul Kooiker }

{ Temple of Schlock | Continue reading }

Coffee Lowers the Risk of Oral Cancer by 49 Percent.

Do genes influence personality?

Would you pay more cash to experience intense happiness or to avoid intense embarrassment? Your answer may depend on the culture you live in.

The data in this study indicate that, on a gross society basis, male parts are more often injured by products than are female parts.

Neurofeminism and Anne Jaap Jacobson.

Researchers build featherweight chips that dissolve in water.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have used genome engineering to create algae that can produce expensive biological drugs more cheaply and in larger quantities than bacteria or mammalian cells.

The Evolution of English Words and Phrases Since 1520.

The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia’s Mortality Crisis.

The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.

What if you could not access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia? How would you feel if Google informed you that your connection had been reset during a search? What if Gmail was only periodically available, and Google Docs was completely unreachable?

These things happen almost every day in China. […] Most of these problems are caused by GFW (Great Firewall of China, also known as GFC), one of the most important building blocks in China’s comprehensive censorship system, and perhaps the most sophisticated Internet censorship system in the world. […] Using special techniques, it successfully blocks the majority of Chinese Internet users from accessing most of the Web sites or information that the government doesn’t like. […]

Over a decade of development, GFW has been deployed near the gateways of all Chinese domestic ISPs. With DPI (deep packet inspection) technology, GFW wiretaps all international links and inspects the traffic to detect any sensitive keywords going through the gateway. GFW depends mainly on three technologies to block “harmful” information: IP blocking, DNS (Domain Name System) injection, and TCP RST (Reset).

{ ACM | Continue reading }

photo { Florian Ruiz }

Workers at Jaguar Land Rover plant given bacon sandwich as their Christmas bonus.

Random House gives employees $5,000 Christmas bonuses because of 50 Shades of Grey success.

Brain cells made from urine.

We like people more when they mimic us. But only up to a point. If mimicry becomes too obvious, it can backfire, becoming mockery. A new study asks just how much imitation is enough to trigger benefits. Does the mimicker need to copy every action, or merely to move the same body parts?

Text messages direct to your contact lens.

Syrian rebels debut homemade fighting vehicle controlled by a Sony PlayStation remote control.

This paper compares corruption in China over the past 15 years with corruption in the U.S. between 1870 and 1930, periods that are roughly comparable in terms of real income per capita.

The rotting carcass of a 40-foot fin whale was quietly pulled out to sea Saturday evening by a private tugboat hired by Malibu residents who were tired of its smell.

Ice fishing shack.

Karaoke.

According to new research, playing hard to get tests the commitment and quality of any would-be mate. Researchers identified 58 different hard-to-get strategies used, from on/off flirting and being snooty to using voicemail to intercept calls from would-be partners.

“Playing hard to get might be one way that people – women in particular – can test their prospective mate’s commitment and to manipulate their prospective mates to obtain what – or whom – they want,” said the psychologists who carried out the study. “We revealed that the more unavailable a person is, the more people are willing to invest in them.”

In the study, reported in the European Journal of Personality, the researchers carried out four separate projects involving more than 1,500 people, looking at playing hard to get as a mating strategy to see how and why it works. […]

Women used the tactics more than men. That, say the researchers, could be because women are trying to learn more information about a potential mate as they have more to lose in terms of pregnancy. […]

Appearing highly self-confident was the top-ranked tactic, followed by talking to other people and, third, withholding sex.

{ Independent | Continue reading }