Time Warp

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:31:12 -0700

Dear Chilicondarwiners,

After several failed attempts to warp time in order to manage the devious art of multitasking, ChiliConDarwin has been forced to take a break which hopefully won't be permanent. In the meantime, please feel free to browse our archive with hundreds and hundreds of posts, or to check out our other sections. Anyway, we will try to post something every now and then just to show signs of life.

Yours Sincerely,

The Cook.

Licit Ways To Entertain Yourself At Work 100

Fri, 7 Aug 2009 10:23:54 -0700

Animal Personalities

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 18:37:55 -0700

Animals have personalities, too. That may be biasing studies of them

Unnatural selection
From The Economist print edition 
THAT people have personalities goes without saying. There are the shy, the cruel, the kind, the sceptical. Pet owners will quickly argue that their animals have personalities too. It is hardly uncommon to hear a dog described as friendly or inquisitive, and scientific research has confirmed that dogs do indeed have personality traits similar to those found in people. In dogs, for instance, these are usually referred to as energy-level, affection-aggression, anxiety-calmness and intelligence-stupidity; in people they are extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness.
Yet in spite of all this, rather little has been done to find out if such characteristics exist in wild animals. One such study, published recently in Animal Behaviour, shows not only that some do, but also that the presence of such traits is skewing the way data are collected by researchers.

The animals in question are birds—collared flycatchers, to be specific. László Garamszegi, who was at the University of Antwerp at the time of the study (he is now at Doñana Biological Station in Spain), and a team of his colleagues monitored the courtship behaviour of this species. The 41 males observed were nesting in boxes long used by the species, and a single attractive female was placed in an enclosure on top of each box.

Full article...

Full of Love, Full of Wonder

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 18:19:32 -0700

Nike Savvas at Roslyn Oxley Gallery.

From Synaptic Stimuli:
“Our conscious mind ponders, processes and deconstructs this seamless flow into things. We then compare and contrast, and rate these things, based on our souls innate desire for truth.” Continue...

More here...

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On Morality and Colour

Tue, 4 Aug 2009 19:12:46 -0700

The association of white with virtue and black with sinfulness is deep

Dark for dark business
From The Economist print edition 
THE virtuous are often said to be as “pure as the driven snow” while villains are frequently described as having hearts of coal or blackened souls. And the metaphor is made flesh (or, at least cloth) in many plays and films where the baddy wears black and the goody white. But how deep does the metaphor actually run, psychologically speaking?

That is the question which was asked by Gary Sherman and Gerald Clore of the University of Virginia. They were pondering a well-known tendency, called the “Macbeth effect”, for people to want to clean themselves physically if they have acted unethically or even had thoughts of corrupt behaviour. (The name comes from the scene in Shakespeare’s play in which Lady Macbeth desperately tries to wash phantom bloodstains from her hands after encouraging her husband to murder the king.) This association of cleanliness with moral probity is further bound up with the now well-established link between moral disgust (eg, at unusual sexual practices) and physical disgust (eg, at handling dirty objects or eating polluted food). The researchers’ ponderings led them to wonder if the moral roles of black, which is roughly the colour of dirt, and white, which shows up the dirt so well, were connected with the Macbeth effect.

To explore this, they devised an experiment involving 27 Caucasian, six Asian, three African-American and two Hispanic students at the university. The students were all asked to state the colour of words that they were presented with as quickly as they could.

Full article...

A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success

Mon, 3 Aug 2009 19:42:27 -0700

Talks Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

Other TED Talks in ChiliConDarwin:

Don't Eat The Marshmallow Yet
The Sneaky Moves of Anti-Social Smartphone Users
Cute, Sexy, Sweet and Funny
Homo Evolutis
The Real Crisis
On Hope
The Dude Does TED
Are Children’s Carseats Necessary?
Problems are Inevitable but they are also Soluble
Being your own Guinea Pig
Teme is the New Meme
Hector Ruiz
Debunking Third World Myths
Open-Source Economics
A Stroke Of Insight
The Mystery Box
The Power Of Failure
The Mathemagician
5 Dangerous Things Your Kids Should Do
The Joy Of Helping
Zee Mutante Super-Monkee
When You Wish Upon A TED Prize
More On The Stuff Of Thought
A Brilliant Future
The Secret To Happiness
Hearing Colors And Smelling Sounds
DNA Origami
The Art Of Creature Creation
Ten Ways The World Could End
How To Spoil The Doomsday Party
Maira Kalman: The Illustrated Woman
Dawkins On The Universe’s Queerness
A New Shade Of Green

Licit Ways To Entertain Yourself At Work 99

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:37:57 -0700

Is Aging a Triumph?

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:05:30 -0700

We are healthier, living longer and birth rates are falling. Only the most blinkered of economists could fail to rejoice.

Our ageing world isn't a catastrophe. It's a triumph
Zoe Williams in The Guardian 
This week the US census bureau announced that, within 10 years and for the first time in history, old people will outnumber young people across the globe. They were careful not to be too judgmental about this – there being so little we can do about it anyway – and concentrated not on consequent problems but on the "challenges to policymakers". And yet whenever this demographic shift comes up, it is presented in terms of a crisis on one hand and a burden on the other.

Pensions area always in turmoil and dependency ratios, particularly in developed economies, are always dangerously skewed. This paper talked about the bureau having "sounded the alarm", about the "burden on carers and social services" and "intense pressures on individuals and families". But so did all the other papers: these are the terms of any discussion about an ageing population – that it represents a calamity. But what if it isn't calamitous? What if it's a good thing?

To start with, there is no sweet spot with life expectancy. The orthodoxy is the higher the better. In Zimbabwe a combination of HIV/Aids, starvation, bad sanitation, and the wellspring of these ills, poor governance, has cut life expectancy at birth to 40 years. In Japan, the country with the highest life expectancy, you can now expect to live to 82. Nowhere in any census or policy document will you see anyone saying "some kind of midpoint would be nice … 61?". This is for a number of reasons – the most obvious being that people, while they enjoy good health, tend not to want to die.

Full article...

The Subjectivity of Seeing

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:29:06 -0700

From Los Angeles based artist Carlos Tarrats:

“Its very important that all of the elements of the image are real. The colors, scratches, and props all exist on set. I like the idea of taking the real and arranging it in such a way that reality is visually distorted, but not structurally. Because in truth my images are real places that did exist at one time, though they looked nothing like what you see now.” Continue...

More here...

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Beyond Light
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Mating Season
Apparent Death
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Medieval Surrealism Is Back
Pictorial Algorithms
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A Look At The Elements
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Analyze This

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:49:42 -0700

Should you go with your head or your heart? How your emotions and rational brain play off each other.

Analyze This
Louisa Kamps in Elle

If life is just a series of decisions, then making smart ones is paramount, especially now. But unless you’re in bankruptcy law, box-wine production, or the sadly recession-proof business of cold storage, chances are you’ve also met the workplace demon: brute, base fear. Fear has a way of leading to dubious decisions, sloppy mistakes, and serious brain fog when it comes to figuring out a master plan for your career and all the major things it’s connected with, from finances to relationships. (“Love and work,” Freud said, “are the cornerstones of our humanness.”)

Trouble is, fear—the ancient, amygdala-driven response to threat—is literally paralyzing. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that when the brain is firing down below with hot, scurrying emotions, the prefrontal cortex—the seat of top-down “executive control”—becomes consumed with managing the anxiety. Cognitive errors abound, and there isn’t enough mental wattage left for hatching brilliant schemes, much less cutting through the daily desktop fuzz incisively. But scientists’ rapidly expanding understanding of how brains consistently botch choices also suggests a number of corrective strategies for making better, smarter, bolder decisions.

Full article...

A Reality Check on a Reality Check

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:41:39 -0700

For years, Canadians have feared the American health care system; now Americans are being told to fear ours

A reality check on a reality check
Julie Mason in The Ottawa Citizen

I'm a secret CNN fan. I just can't get enough of those talking heads with their gleaming teeth, wet-look lipstick and perfect coiffures. Even at 4 a.m., some gorgeous thing with flawless makeup (men and women) will be gushing about important affairs of state like Michael Jackson or that philandering governor from South Carolina.

Every once in a while, CNN will notice there's a country north of the 49th parallel that has some weird little customs, like parliamentary democracy or gun control. They then venture forth to do in-depth analysis of our quaint habits for the benefit of the enlightened viewers of, let's say, Kentucky.

Kentucky is to blame for the latest CNN investigation of Canada -- a "Reality Check" on Canada's health care. It seems the state -- known for fried chicken and racehorses -- is also home to Senator Mitch McConnell, a high-ranking Republican of impeccable conservative credentials. Senator McConnell does not like President Barack Obama's plan to reform health care, and he's decided to use Canada as a weapon to help him fight the battle.

Full article...

Licit Ways To Entertain Yourself At Work 98

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:38:17 -0700

When Myth Trumps Science

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:55:44 -0700

Whether it's thinking that vitamin C can cure a cold, or that you must drink eight glasses of water a day, people cling to outdated medical lore long after it's been shown to be wrong. Here's why.

When Myth Trumps Science
Sarah Kliff in Newsweek

Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll weren't looking to start a controversy. They're both pediatricians at Indiana University who, as a side project to their day jobs, put together a study on a few medical myths that many doctors believe. The results weren't exactly earth-shattering: they revealed that you don't actually need to drink eight glasses of water and nails do not continue to grow after death. And the research definitely wasn't new. "We looked through old research and basically put it all together," explains Vreeman.

But from the reactions that Vreeman and Carroll got, you'd think they were questioning the very flatness of the earth. They received hundreds of e-mails from strangers and dozens of media requests. One particularly disquieted man repeatedly called their office, irate over their discrediting of the eight-glass myth. He was so threatening and abusive that their administrative staff filed a restraining order. "A lot of people were incredibly upset to think that we would question the fact that you need eight glasses of water," says Vreeman. "Nine studies from the physiology literature have suggested we get enough water from other things we drink, yet many people feel very strongly about water."

Full article...

Cute and Brute

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:32:35 -0700

From Los Angeles based artist Luke Chueh:

“Employing minimal color schemes, simple animal characters, and a seemingly endless list of ill-fated situations, Chueh stylistically balances cute with brute, walking the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Chueh's work has been featured in galleries around the world, and some of his paitnings have also been reinterpreted into vinyl toys.”

More here...

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Who’s crazy now?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:51:58 -0700

“The drug barons’ ongoing campaign to pathologize entirely natural emotional responses to hunger, humiliation, financial insecurity, racism, sexism, overwork, and isolation is a mercenary tactic, designed to create markets, maximize profits, and minimize dissidence,’’

Who’s crazy now?
Alex Beam in The Boston Globe

Every couple of decades or so, psychiatrists publish their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which functions as the instruction booklet for their profession. The manual always attracts its fair share of mockery, and the last one was no exception.

That 886-page volume, published in 1994, famously included snoring (“Breathing-Related Sleep Disorder’’; DSM code 780.59), smoking (“Nicotine Dependence’’; 305.10), quitting smoking (“Nicotine Withdrawal’’; 292.0), and jet lag among the nation’s mental disorders. One writer called it “a naked land grab by a profession threatened with marginalization by biomedical research.’’
I am quoting my past self, doubtless a diagnosable disorder of some kind.
Surprise, surprise, the psychiatrists are at it again. The fifth edition of DSM is in the making, and already the fur is flying. “What began as a group of top scientists reviewing the research literature has degenerated into a dispute that puts the Hatfield-McCoy feud to shame,’’ wrote Dr. Daniel Carlat, a professor at Tufts Medical School, on his blog recently.

What’s going on? For one thing, there is continuing pressure to keep adding questionable diagnoses to the DSM stew. There is talk of expanding the ever-fashionable ADHD diagnosis (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to include an adult-onset version. Last time around, some shrinks wanted to include PMS (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or premenstrual syndrome), an effort headed off at the pass because it risked stigmatizing healthy women. Eating disorders will probably be broadened, too.

Full article...

A Fighting Chance

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:07:16 -0700

As Mexico steps up its war against the brutal cartels that supply the United States’ drug habit, leaders on both sides of the border face tough questions about how to combat a problem that threatens the very fabric of Mexico’s democracy.

A Fighting Chance Alfredo Corchado in The Wilson Quarterly

Newspaper headlines and tabloid pictures tell the story: headless corpses, blood-soaked vehicles, and a growing array of victims—drug traffickers, cops, politicians, journalists, and, increasingly, civilians. The lazy, tranquil Mexico I grew up in is engulfed in the bloodiest drug violence anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

Nine years after an opposition party came to power—an event that was supposed to solidify the democracy that had been little more than a word in Mexico during several decades of oligarchic rule—Mexico’s rule of law is withering before it takes root. Since 2006 more than 10,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence—1,000 of them in the first 45 days of this year alone. Last year, more Mexicans died in Mexico’s drug war than Americans have died in Iraq since 2003.

To be sure, the Mexican government has scored important victories, though these successes, expressed in numbers, also suggest the scope of the problem. More than 57,000 cartel kingpins, couriers, hit men, and lookouts—known as falcons—have been arrested since 2006. In the last two years, as many as 77 tons of cocaine, 585 kilos of heroin, and thousands of tons of marijuana have been seized. Authorities have impounded more than 33,000 firearms and some 4.5 million rounds of ammunition tied to trafficking.

Many U.S. and Mexican officials say that a crime problem—albeit a grave one—is being overblown. They scoff at a year-end Pentagon report calling Mexico and Pakistan the two countries most at risk of becoming failed states. “Failed states do not have functioning executive, legislative, and judicial branches,” says Tony Garza, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico. “They do not boast the world’s 12th-largest economy, nor do they trade with the United States at a pace of more than $1 billion a day.”

Full article...

Licit Ways To Entertain Yourself At Work 97

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:57:13 -0700

Why Handsome Men Make Bad Husbands

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:52:27 -0700

Why Handsome Men Make Bad Husbands I
Engaging in the cad strategy.
From Psychology Today

You may have recently heard or seen the news coverage (in the New York Daily News or CBS news online, among others; you may have even seen the lead author, James K. McNulty of the University of Tennessee, discuss it on the Today show) of a study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, that showed that couples in which the woman is physically more attractive than the man are happier than couples in which the man is physically more attractive than the woman. Why is this? Why is it better for the couple if the woman is physically more attractive than the man?

If you have been keeping score at home, the findings of this study should have come as no surprise to you. There are two different reasons why couples in which the woman is more attractive than the man are more successful and happier than couples in which the man is more attractive than the woman.
First, as we elaborate in Chapter 4 of our book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (“Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage? The Evolutionary Psychology of Marriage”), handsome men on average make bad husbands. Men can maximize their reproductive success by pursuing one of two different strategies: Seek a long-term mate, stay with her, and invest in their joint offspring (the “dad” strategy); or seek a large number of short-term mates without investing in any of the resulting offspring (the “cad” strategy).

Full article...

Crayon Art

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:36:44 -0700

From Christian Faur’s crayons series:

“My earliest memories of making art involve the use of wax crayons. I can still remember the pleasure of opening a new box of crayons: the distinct smell of the wax, the beautifully colored tips, everything still perfect and unused. Using the first crayon from a new box always gave me a slight pain. Through a novel technique that I have developed, I again find myself working with the familiar form of the crayon.”

More here...

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The Alphamega Series
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Metal Automata
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A Look At The Elements
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Flower Mandalas
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Book Autopsies
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Turnerisms
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A Modernist’s Nightmare
Scalpel Art
Maira Kalman: The Illustrated Woman
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Book
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The Lighter Kilogram

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:10:20 -0700

The good news is that you’re not as overweighted as you think.

Within a high-security, climate-controlled vault in France, the perfect kilogram is getting ever so slightly less massive—and no one knows why.

The Kilogram Isn't What It Used to Be—It's Lighter
Dava Sobel in Discover Magazine

Sèvres*, France—What I love best about the kilogram is its tangibility, its solid, sculpted form of shiny platinum and iridium. I’m referring to not just any kilogram but the quintessential one that resides here—the actual International Prototype Kilogram, or IPK, created in 1879 as the official standard of mass. It’s a smooth cylinder of alloy, only an inch and a half high and an inch and a half in diameter. Though petite, the IPK is necessarily dense; it weighs 2.2046 pounds. If you went to pick it up, you might think someone had cemented it to the tabletop for a prank. Even if you knew what to expect, its compact heft would still boggle your senses.

Of course, they won’t let you pick it up. They won’t even let you anywhere near it. If you touched it—if you so much as breathed on it—you would change its mass, and then where would we be? That’s why the IPK leads such a sheltered life. It is kept under a triple bell jar inside a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault in a secure room within the Parc de Saint-Cloud enclave of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, or BIPM (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures). Thus protected, it reigns over a world’s worth of measurement. Every hill of beans, every lump of coal, every milligram of medication—in short, every quantity of any substance that can be weighed—must be gauged against this object.

The IPK is, in and of itself, the International System of Units’ definition of mass. Through a complex dissemination protocol, the essence of the kilogram is transferred from the IPK to its counterparts at standards laboratories around the world, and from there to centers of industry and scientific research, ending up in grocery stores, post offices, and bathrooms everywhere.

Full article...

The Impending Demise of The University

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:22:56 -0700

"Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning. There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn."

The Impending Demise of The University
Don Tapscott in Edge

For fifteen years, I've been arguing that the digital revolution will challenge many fundamental aspects of the University. I've not been alone. In 1998, none other than, Peter Drucker predicted that big universities would be "relics" within 30 years.

Flash forward to today and you'd be reasonable to think that we have been quite wrong. University attendance is at an all time high. The percentage of young people enrolling in degree granting institutions rose over 115% from 1969-1970 to 2005-2007, while the percentage of 25- to 29-year-old Americans with a college degree doubled. The competition to get into the greatest universities has never been fiercer. At first blush the university seems to be in greater demand than ever.

Yet there are troubling indicators that the picture is not so rosy. And I'm not just talking about the decimation of university endowments by the current financial meltdown.

Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning, as the web inexorably becomes the dominant infrastructure for knowledge sweeney both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people.

Meanwhile on campus, there is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.

The model of pedagogy, of course, is only one target of criticism directed toward universities.

Full article...

Licit Ways To Entertain Yourself At Work 96

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:36:09 -0700

This Image Will Self-Erase in Five Minutes

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 19:59:11 -0700

Nanoparticles that disperse making images to disappear.

This document will self-erase in five minutes
Jon Evans in New Scientist

THIS article will self-erase in 10 seconds. At least it would if it had been written on a film that exploits the colour-changing ability of nanoparticles. The technology could make it possible to create documents that wipe themselves clean after they've been read.

A team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, coated gold nanoparticles with a layer of hair-like molecules called 4-(11-mercaptoundecanoxy)azobenzene or MUA. When zapped with ultraviolet light, these filaments change their shape and charge distribution, causing the nanoparticles to congregate together and change colour (see diagram).
"The colour of the nanoparticles depends on how close they are to one another," says lead researcher Bartosz Grzybowski. "For instance, gold nanoparticles are red when separated, but become violet, then blue, then colourless as they cluster together."

To put this colour-changing ability to good use, the team dispersed the nanoparticles in a gel and sandwiched it between plastic sheets to produce a thin, red film. When Grzybowski and his colleagues shone UV light at the film, either through a patterned mask or using a UV pen, they found they could print a range of images or write words onto the film in just a few seconds (Angewandte Chemie, DOI: 10.1002/anie.200901119).

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Roadshow

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 18:23:25 -0700

Photographer Hubert Blanz’ “Roadshow” album:

THE PHOTOGRAPHER AS ARCHITECT
by Florian Rötzer

It’s only been in the last few years that we as Internet users have had the possibility of undertaking virtual trips in the real world – or at least with images of the real world. With Google Earth, all Internet users have been given access to pictures taken with cameras from airplanes and surveillance satellites, and thus a zooming gaze down on the world. Ever since then, what previously could only be seen by the military and intelligence agencies – or to a limited extent by air passengers – has become a new view of the world that also changes our perception of architecture and the city.
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0.75 Degrees Warmer

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 19:49:16 -0700

Four scientists discuss where the climate is and where it's going.

The State of the Climate—and of Climate Science
From Discover Magazine

In the list of world challenges, global warming might be at once the most alarming and the most controversial. According to some predictions, climate change caused by human activity could cause mass extinction in the oceans, redraw the planet’s coastlines, and ravage world food supplies. At the same time, a significant portion of the American public questions whether global warming will really cause any major harm; many still doubt that human-driven warming is happening at all. How can we settle the debate? And can we intervene in the process or find ways to adapt to the new conditions? In conjunction with the National Science Foundation and the San Francisco Exploratorium, DISCOVER brought together four experts to discuss the reality and meaning of climate change. In a highly nuanced exchange of ideas, these researchers weighed the various scenarios and laid out a road map for navigating the warmer world to come. The conversation was moderated by DISCOVER’s editor in chief, Corey S. Powell.

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