Power is desirable – it helps us achieve goals, frees us from many social constraints, and allows us to be ourselves. […]

According to recent research by Ena Inesi and colleagues, having power – as a manager, as the higher-paid spouse, or even as the babysitter – leads people to see favors by others as more selfishly motivated.

Across five different studies, Inesi and her colleagues found that power lead people to make cynical attributions about the intentions behind another person’s kind acts.

{ Psych your mind | Continue reading }

photo { Nan Goldin, Nan and Dickie in the York Motel, New Jersey, 1980 }

Women are picky. The general idea is that females invest more in reproduction, and, as such, need to be more selective about their partners. This purportedly has its root in anisogamy, a complicated word to say that egg cells are more expensive to produce, and lesser in number, than sperm cells. Basically, females have to use their egg cells carefully, while men can go around and generously spread their sperm. […]

Two main suggestions:

• Sexy sons: choosy females pick sexy males to mate with. Their offspring inherits both the preference and the attractiveness. And a positive feedback loop follows.

• Good genes: male attractiveness signals additional quality, or more precisely breeding value for fitness. The sons of attractive males inherit these qualities along with the ‘being sexy.’ Here, there is a link between attractiveness and ‘quality.’

{ The Beast, the bard and the bot | Continue reading }

images { 1. Phillip Pearstein | 2 }

He said that there are three key elements that all the successful ones had in common. […]

(1) Don’t have a lot of overhead. Don’t commit to a large rent. Don’t have a large mortgage or, if you do, pay it down quickly.

{ EconLog | Continue reading }

photos { John Crawford }

There is ample evidence that women do not react to competition as men do and are less willing to enter a competition than men. In this paper, we use personality variables to understand the underlying motives of women (and men) to enter a competition or avoid it. We use the Big Five personality factors, where especially neuroticism [tendency to experience negative emotional states] has been related to performance in achievement settings. We first test whether scores on the Big Five are related to performance in our experiment, and second how this is related to incentives. We can show that the sex difference in the willingness to enter a competition is mediated by neuroticism and further that neuroticism is negatively related to performance in competiton. This raises the possibility that those women who do not choose competitive incentives “know” that they should not.

{ SSRN | Continue reading }

images { 1 | 2 }

{ Camelflage | Thank you brother Glenn! }

Thinking about eternity is not simply an esoteric mental exercise. It’s a cure for boredom. […]

Witness the man of stone. It takes an eternity for his eyes to blink even once. He stares at the sun, the moon, and the stars as they pass by turns overhead. One day he crumbles and only a pile of rubble remains. He wasn’t cut out for the eternal.

{ The Science Creative Quarterly | Continue reading }

photos { Nadav Kader }

A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

{ APS | Continue reading }

Photographers: you’re being replaced by software

For the first time in history, photography is about to lose control of its monopoly on affordable, convincing realism and it’s time for us to understand that realism has never been the most important feature of the photograph.

{ Photo Journal | Continue reading }

{ Marcel Proust playing air guitar on a tennis racket circa 1892 }

The great innovations come with side-effects. I have encountered people who said this about our chronic back pains being a side-effect of upright walking. It is a great thing but may have a couple of weak spots. We would actually be surprised if evolution didn’t take some time in a shake down of a new species.

A recent paper in Cell by 20 authors has tackled the question of whether autism is the unfortunate result of the malfunctioning of a relatively new aspect of the human brain.

{ Thoughts on thoughts | Continue reading }

painting { Francis Bacon, Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1976 }

The settings for a person’s biological clock might provide clues to when, during the day, he or she will be more active. What’s more, these same settings could be linked to what time of day a person might die, a new study finds.

Understanding the biological basis of these built-in, or circadian, clocks “could lead to products that eventually allow us to shift the clock forwards or backwards,” says Philip De Jager, a neurologist with Harvard Medical School in Boston. He and his colleagues describe their work online April 26 in Annals of Neurology.

Being able to alter these clocks could prove useful for shift workers, such as pilots, who might face trouble working against their intrinsic daily rhythms, De Jager adds. And patients can be better cared for if doctors know what times of day are most critical.

Previously, scientists have shown that many genes are involved in regulating people’s inherent daily wake and sleep patterns. Disruptions to this natural circadian rhythm are often linked to serious health conditions, including diabetes.

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

photo { Sean and Seng }

One of the more interesting aspects of social psychology is the way different orientations can cause people to interpret the same thing in different ways. For example, you judge something differently if it were to happen in the past rather than the future. More specifically, according to a new study by Zachary Burns, Eugene Caruso, and Daniel Bartels, we tend to view future actions as more intentional than past actions, and as a result we prefer to punish future transgressions more harshly.

{ peer reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

photo { Jaimie Warren }

The season in which a baby is born apparently influences the risk of developing mental disorders later in life, suggests a large new study.

The season of birth may affect everything from eyesight and eating habits to birth defects and personality later in life. Past research has also hinted the season one is born in might affect mental health, with scientists suggesting a number of reasons for this apparent effect. […]

The researchers found that all the mental disorders they looked at showed seasonal distributions. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder had statistically significant peaks in January, and significant lows in July, August and September. Depression saw an almost significant May peak and a significant November deficit.

{ LiveScience | Continue reading }

New Jersey town begins issuing $85 fines for texting while walking.

Divorce courts mirror society as more women pay alimony.

Connecticut radioactive man pulled over by police.

Urinating swimmers may be why 500 fish died.

A new Israeli law prohibits fashion media and advertising from using Photoshop or models who fall below the World Health Organization’s standard for malnutrition.

Understanding J.P. Morgan’s Loss, And Why More Might Be Coming.

Great news for Vergara’s horny male fanbase.

Physicists store short movie in a cloud of gas.

Researcher runs IP network over xylophones.

Skilled liars make great lie detectors.

“Most people with a mental disorder are happy.”

A walk in the park gives mental boost to people with depression.

Young male drivers are more vulnerable than older men to sleepiness.

Milk contains enough calcium to turn nipples into bone – why do they remain soft?

A citywide ban on public smoking in Colorado led to significant decreases in maternal smoking and preterm births, providing the first evidence in the US that such interventions can impact maternal and fetal health.

Chronic cocaine use triggers changes in brain’s neuron structure.

Why Some Orangutans Never Want to Grow Up. Some males take decades to fully mature; this arrested development can improve their odds of mating success.

Although brain cells are built from a common blueprint, they differ from one another structurally, functionally and genetically. The Discovery and Naming of the Neuron.

Non-verbal communication between conductor, musician leads to better musician.

The bro position was played by Dave Clemans of an agency called Taxi, whose adult frat-boy look and constant stream of empty positive affirmations would have qualified him as the heartthrob counselor at a teen summer camp. “I said this before and I really believe it: culture is everything,” Dave said. “If there is any new craft in the industry, innovation is the new craft,” Dave said. “It’s about assembling the right team—the ‘Make It Happen’ people,” Dave said. [Thanks Tim]

The British undercover agent in the underpants bomb plot that has emerged so sensationally in recent days, was recruited using a technique pioneered by the founder of the KGB.

Projections show secularism losing momentum and beginning to decline in both Europe and America by 2050, largely because of low fertility and religious immigration.

I was a teenager the first time I faked an orgasm. It was during cybersex in an early-’90s AOL chat room.

The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable. What Will Become of the Paper Book?

Diaspora aimed to convince consumers otherwise. The founders envisioned a site that would function like a social network but would give users ownership of their data, taking exploitation out of the equation. The Diaspora founders couldn’t imagine their idea would lead to a turbulent two years that would include a move to Silicon Valley, fame, scrutiny, and tragedy.

Interview with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.

Interview with a safecracker.

How Starbucks Trains Customers to Behave.

Shouldn’t the expression “head over heels” be “heels over head”?

New .secure Internet Domain On Tap.

Apple has reportedly been working on its own Maps service for the next version of its iOS platform, meaning it might kick Google Maps off the operating system.

Kickstarter lapse leaves 70,000 project ideas exposed. Company acknowledges screw-up, claims impact was minimal.

Icons that don’t make sense anymore.

3D print glove is a wearable mobile phone. [Thanks Tim]

Russian satellite’s 121-megapixel image of Earth is most detailed yet.

6 Myths Everyone Believes about Space (Thanks to Movies).

Photos that would look cool on the New Shelton Wet Dry [Thank you The Worst of Perth]

I had been living in Mexico City for only two months when I encountered artist P.J. Rountree’s collection of El Grafico covers.

The smell is so powerful that not many visitors can take it. The “poo-machine” at the Museum of Old and New Art.

Let’s see.

Don’t you wish there was some discreet way for girls to quietly advertise the fact they’re into anal?

Hard to tell where these people are from.

Members of the Olympic Family must also have at their disposal at least 500 air-conditioned limousines with chauffeurs wearing uniforms and caps. London must set aside, and pay for, 40,000 hotel rooms, including 1,800 four- and five-star rooms for the I.O.C. and its associates, for the entire period of the Games. London must cede to the I.O.C. the rights to all intellectual property relating to the Games, including the international trademark on the phrase “London 2012.” Although mail service and the issuance of currency are among any nation’s sovereign rights, the contract requires the British government to obtain the I.O.C.’s “prior written approval” for virtually any symbolic commemoration of the Games, including Olympic-themed postage stamps, coins, and banknotes. […]

Near the end of the application process, an I.O.C. evaluation committee was permitted to visit London. Bid-committee officials knew that London’s transportation system was a weak spot on the city’s application. “Our nightmare was it would take forever to get to the venues,” Mills recalled. A bid-committee team planned the routes that I.O.C. members would travel around the city, and G.P.S. transmitters were planted in all of the I.O.C. members’ vehicles so they could be tracked. From the London Traffic Control Center, near Victoria Station, where hundreds of monitors display live feeds from London’s comprehensive CCTV surveillance system, each vehicle was followed, from camera to camera, “and when they came up to traffic lights,” Mills said, “we turned them green.”

{ Vanity Fair | Continue reading }

In a new study, seniors in a good mood compared fewer options and made worse choices than did those in a bad mood or younger participants.

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

photos { Todd Fisher | Juergen Teller }

Since its publication (1859), the evolution theory of Charles Darwin has met with considerable opposition, notably from religious circles. Although scientific opposition decreased soon after, public rejection of evolution never died down. Recent research shows that a substantial part of the western world does not accept the idea of evolution. This article tries to understand the evolution controversy by reframing it as a phenomenon of public understanding of science.

Findings suggest that the decision to reject evolution does not involve scientific knowledge. Arguments drawn from science are merely viewed as an addition to a decision that is already made and serve as a rationale to a non-rational decision.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

image { Karin }

The parent-offspring conflict theory delineates a zone of conflict between the mother and her offspring over weaning. We expect that the mother would try to wean her offspring off a little earlier than the offspring would be ready to wean themselves, thereby entering the zone of conflict for a short span of time. Though the theory was originally formulated in the context of weaning, it is also relevant in other contexts where a parent and his/her offspring have conflicting interests. Conflict has been reported over feeding, grooming, traveling, evening nesting, and mating in various species.

There are several theoretical models that address parent-offspring conflict in different contexts like reproduction, intra-brood competition, sexual conflict, and parental favoritism toward particular offspring. Though relatedness between parents, offspring and siblings can be measured easily, it is not easy to measure precisely parental investment and the costs and benefits to the concerned parties in nature. In some studies attempts have been made to quantify parental care in terms of milk ingested by offspring, sometimes as a correlate of weight gain by the individual pups, and sometimes by the duration of suckling. However, we have to accept that there is considerable variation in the suckling rates of individual pups, and in hunger levels of individuals, and hence such measures can only provide a rough estimate of parental investment. It is therefore not surprising that empirical tests of the theory in a field set up are sparse, especially in the original context of weaning. The parent-offspring conflict theory has in fact been claimed to be one of the most contentious subjects in behavioral and evolutionary ecology and also one of the most recalcitrant to experimental investigation.

{ arXiv | PDF }

The aim of this article is to discuss how changes in tomato food regulation, production and consumption, can be seen as part of a broader societal change from Modernity to Late Modernity.

Based on evidence from the Swedish and European food systems we demonstrate how a system, which has been successfully managing development in food production for several decades by stressing rationality, homogeneity and standardization, is being challenged by a system that has adapted to, and also exploited, consumer preferences such as heterogeneity, diversity and authenticity.

The article shows how tomato growers develop differentiation strategies, adapting to and cultivating this new consumer interest, and how authorities responsible for regulations of trade and quality struggle to adapt to the new situation. As the products become more diversified, taste becomes an important issue and is associated with a view that traditional and natural are superior to standardized and homogeneous products.

{ Culture Unbound | Continue reading }