National Geographic has just published a terrific article summarizing the many ways in which animals think. Here’s the article. You can watch a short accompanying video on this topic of animal cognition here. I like the approach to both the article and the video. They are both centered around large beautiful portraits of many…
I am a wealthy person, but not in the way most people understand “wealthy.” I don’t drive an expensive car (I drive a 9-year old Saturn). I don’t own a vacation house. I don’t expect to retire for many years.
I am wealthy because I am a survivor. I have repeatedly escaped adversity and I’ve repeatedly stumbled into enough lucky situations. These unplanned events add up to an undeniable and compelling form of wealth.
When most people consider how “fortunate” they are, they engage in some form of “accounting.” For starters, they add up their savings and they subtract amounts they owe to others. That gives them a financial base line. There’s more to figuring wealth, of course.
Some people consider their health when they assess their wealth. If their bodies are in tolerable working order, that’s something well worth noting, especially for those over thirty. Among people discussing age, I often assert that after thirty, “age” is mostly about health rather than chronological age. Young adults snicker at this (I used to). But imagine a room full of forty-year olds. Everyone in the room is about forty, but just look how different they are! Some of them look and act like they’re 25 and others are functional 75 year olds, often due to obesity, history of injury or illness, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, lack of sleep or various detrimental addictions. The bottom line is that if you’re body is working even tolerably, that’s a big plus when figuring …
In the January 31, 2008 edition of Nature, author Dan Jones reviews what evolution indicates about human killing humans. As with many human behaviors, the evolutionists divide on whether killing of other humans is an adaptation (a change in organisms that allows them to live more successfully in an environment) or a “byproduct of urges toward some other goal.” There are intriguing arguments for both sides.
Some have suggested that individual murder is more likely a byproduct, whereas organized violence (such as the type we see in wars) is more often an adaptation. What is the biological evidence pointing to something other than byproduct? A 1997 study found that “the average volume of the orbitofrontal cortex between men and women accounts for about half of the variation in antisocial behavior between the sexes.” Combine this with Jane Goodall’s observations of gang violence in chimpanzees, where “the adult males of one community systematically attacked and killed the males of another group over a period of years, with the victorious group eventually absorbing the remaining victims.”
It is incredibly hard to weed out the cultural factors from the biological, of course. Here’s something I found interesting. Interpersonal attacks leading to death have declined dramatically over the past few centuries.
…After rising from an average of 32 homicides per 100,000 people per year in the 13th and 14th centuries to 41 in the 15th, the murder rate has steadily dropped in every subsequent century, 21.9, 11, 3.2, 2.6 and finally 1.4 in
It's difficult to overcome the prejudice that having more choices is always better. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz made a convincing case that too much choice can overload and paralyze us. I couldn't help but think of the paradox of choice while grocery shopping yesterday. One of the…
How does one find a transitional fossil? It's a lot harder than I ever imagined. I just started reading a book that looks quite promising: Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008), by Neil Shubin. The author is a professor of…