| behaviour
and intelligence archive 5 |
space
lag—working to mars time
“Everything on this mission is based on local solar time on Mars,"
said Julie Townsend, Mars Exploration Rover avionics systems engineer. "From
home, during the mission practice tests, it was very difficult to constantly
translate Earth time to Mars time." ”
A day on Mars is 24 hours 39 minutes. In order to optimise the 90 days scheduled
for the Rover mission, NASA Mars scientists are living in Mars time. Thus,
they do not lose a minute with reviewing data received from the two Mars rovers
and the orbiting probes, then planning and deciding what each rover should
do next, then instructing the engineers who instruct the rovers, and starting
the process all over again as the next stream of data comes in.
 |
To help keep Mars time, the scientists use
a wristwatch
with mechanical movements made by watchmaker Garo Anserlian.
“In order to make the watches useful to the Mars Exploration
Rover team, Garo had to physically attach additional specific lead
weights thus precisely altering the movement of the wheels and hands
on certain existing famous-maker wristwatches.”
|
“[A]mbitious rover team members have chosen to extend and alter their
schedules 40 minutes every day to stay in sync with their [Rover] twins’
day and night schedules on Mars. One day, for example, team members might
come in to work at 9:00 a.m. The next day, they'd come in at 9:40 a.m.,
and the next day at 10:20 a.m., and so on. They end up running multiple
laps around Earth’s 24-hour schedule throughout the mission.
“Scientists and engineers utilize every possible second of sunlight
on Mars and squeeze in as much action as possible with the rovers. To make
life for the rover team ever more fulfilling and confusing, Spirit and Opportunity
live on opposite sides of Mars. That means, when one rover is sleeping,
the other is awake, putting the rover team in business 24/7 - or 24:40/7!
”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour190204 |
19.02.2004 |
advertising
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|
| the
biggest ginormous bomb ever exploded by silly humans
“ A 100 Mt weapon can level urban areas in a zone 60 km wide, cause
heavy damage in a zone 100 km across, and cause 3rd degree burns in a region
170 km across (only a bit smaller than the width of West Germany). Such
a weapon can only be used as a means of destroying an entire urban region
- a major urban complex including suburbs and even neighboring cities. This
scale of destruction is much larger than any discrete urban area in Western
Europe. With its dense settlement, use of such a weapon in Europe is equivalent
to an attack on a major portion of an entire nation and its population.
Fallout from a low altitude or surface burst in central England could produce
lethal exposures extending into the Warsaw Pact nations; a similar explosion
in West Germany could create lethal fallout as far as the Soviet border.”
Link from Greg Hennessy
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour110204 |
11.02.2004 |
| public
education—teaching people to be dumb
Much of a straightforward book on the above subject
can be accessed using this link.
“The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in
the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That
capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years
would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate
for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home
in New York costs. You wouldn’t build a home without some idea what
it would look like when finished, but you are compelled to let a corps of
perfect strangers tinker with your child’s mind and personality without
the foggiest idea what they want to do with it.
“Law courts and legislatures have totally absolved school people
from liability. You can sue a doctor for malpractice, not a schoolteacher.
Every homebuilder is accountable to customers years after the home is built;
not schoolteachers, though. You can’t sue a priest, minister, or rabbi
either; that should be a clue.”
related material
citizenship curriculum
link from Graham Innocent.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour220104 |
22.01.2004
related material
citizenship curriculum |
| |
on free speech
and sanity 19.01.2004
While believing in unicorns is unlikely to interfere
with impartiality with regard to politics, it is likely to interfere with
impartiality if presenting a TV programme on zoology.
The unicorns that Kilroy-Silk [1]
is ranting about are likely to indicate interference with any ability
to discuss social matters with any useful or serious competence, let alone
discuss with ‘impartiality’.
There are idiots who wish to equate President Bush
with Adolf Hitler; they are obviously idiots to anyone not entirely detached
from the real world. Yet the idiots seem sincerely to believe the idiocy.
Surely somewhere, a distinction must be made between
free speech and contact with reality. I do not really want people in classrooms
or public pulpits who are more than semi-detached from reality.
It has been long proven that you can get the uneducated
or primitive to believe just about anything: witch burning; blowing people
up for allah and a supply of virgins; mass murder for the glory of socialism,
or the inquisition, or for ‘racial’ purity.
Only by developing empiricism and insisting in teaching
realism in the public space, can we hope for a more civilised society.
It will not be achieved by some damned silly superstitious idea that all
views are ‘equal’.
One or two loons parading around with sandwich boards
demanding that we repent, or stop eating beans, may add some colour and
may be tolerated. But a growing army of nutcases who wish to kill infidels
or blondes is not compatible with security or a sane society.
Humans are clearly subject to such waves of irrational
hysteria. It is not sufficient to quote some easy nostrum like ‘free
speech’. I think it as reasonable to insist on sane practises, as
it is to insist on sanitary practices.
Wild generalisation is not sane practice. We should,
in my view, attempt to eliminate wild generalisations with at least as
much enthusiasm as we attempt to limit the spread of cholera by chlorinating
the water.
I do not mind people examining cholera in laboratories,
nor discussing the levels of chlorine, or substitutes, to be added to
the water supply. However, I do not want the neighbours tipping their
sewage directly into the reservoirs in the name of freedom.
These sorts of irrational expression, such as wild
generalisations, are the equivalent of mental cholera. In my view, it
is necessary to recognise these mental diseases for what they are, not
take a medieval view that disease comes from god and we are helpless to
deal with it.
- Robert Kilroy-Silk is a British television presenter
sacked for an article he wrote, recently republished, about Muslims
and Islam.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour190104 |
advertising
disclaimer |
| female
attractivity
“... the best way to judge a woman's attractiveness is to take
her volume in cubic metres and divide it by the square of her height.
The researchers call the figure her volume-height index, or VHI.”
—
“[VHI] is really just a slight modification to an older, easier-to-calculate
measurement: the body mass index (BMI), defined as weight in kilograms
divided by the square of height in metres.”
—
“.... women with a BMI of 18 to 19, for example, are ranked as
the most lovely. That's at the slim end of the normal BMI range, 18.5
to 24.9.”
1 stone = 14lb, 1 lb = 2.2kg
1 foot = 12 inches, 39.4 in = 1 metre
Example calculation:
9st 3lb, 5ft 6.5in
- (9st x 14) + 3 = 129lb, 129lb / 2.2 = 58.64 kg —wt in kg
- (5ft x 12) + 6.5 = 66.5 in, 66.5 / 39.3 = 1.688 m —height in
metres
- 1.688 x 1.688 = 2.8561 m² —height squared (h²)
- BMI = wt in kg / ht² = 58.64 / 2.8493 = 20.58
Here
is a fun BMI calculator.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour140104 |
14.01.2004 |
| why politically
correct flummery is fashionable
“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians
of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised
so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through
them, the events of history.”
Such political ‘theories’ are anti-scientific. They are the
playthings of weak minds wanting simplistic ‘answers’ and
seeking ‘respect’. They are proposed by people who cannot
keep up with rigourous thinking. They become a playground for inner cliques
who listen only to those who will play their silly incestuous games.
Here is someone caricaturing the whole mindset and game (there is more
at the link quoted). It shows and discusses why Chumsky and other lefties
cannot keep up, and what they try to do about it.
&
how the sane cope with that flummery
“We retreated back to Palo Alto that evening for a quick rewrite.
The first order of business was to excise various little bits of phraseology
that we now realized were likely to be perceived as Politically Incorrect.
Mind you, the fundamental thesis of our presentation was Politically
Incorrect, but we wanted people to get upset about the actual content
rather than the form in which it was presented. Then we set about attempting
to add
something that would be an adequate response to the postmodern lit crit-speak
we had been inundated with that day. Since we had no idea what any of
it meant (or even if it actually meant anything at all), I simply cut-and-pasted
from my notes. The next day I stood up in front of the room and opened
our presentation with the following:
****
“The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated
identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical
forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative
space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive
strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts,
each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying
the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.
*****
“This bit of nonsense was constructed entirely out of things
people had actually said the day before, except for the last ten words
or so which are a pastiche of Danny Kaye's "flagon with the dragon"
bit from The Court Jester, contributed by our co-worker Gayle Pergamit,
who took great glee in the entire enterprise. Observing the audience
reaction was instructive. At first, various people started nodding their
heads in nods of profound understanding, though you could see that their
brain cells were beginning to strain a little. Then some of the techies
in the back of the room began to giggle. By the time I finished, unable
to get through the last line with a straight face, the entire room was
on the floor in hysterics, as by then even the most obtuse English professor
had caught on to the joke. With the postmodernist lit crit shit thus
defused, we went on with our actual presentation.”
related material
putting chomsky
in perspective
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour110104 |
11.01.2004
related material
putting chomsky
in perspective |
| |
why
religion
- “Religion has its own work, which is to educate people who are
too dull to understand philosophy, or too untutored to be amenable to
its teaching. This is why religion is necessary, for what it preaches
is fundamentally the same as what philosophy teaches, and, unless common
men believed what it preaches, they would behave like beasts. But theologians
should preach, not teach, just as philosophers should teach, not preach.
Theologians should not attempt to demonstrate, because they cannot do
it, and philosophers must be careful not to get belief mixed up with what
they prove, because then they can no longer prove anything. Now, to preach
creation is just a handy way to make people feel that God is their Master,
which is true even though, as is well known by those who truly philosophize,
nothing of the sort ever happened.”
- Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, p. 52
-
Quote from First Maje.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour060104_2 |
06.01.2004 |
| britney
spears on peace and love and parental responsibility
“Brit-haters like Kendel Ehrlich, the governor of Maryland's wife,
who announced her desire to ''shoot'' Spears (while speaking at a domestic-violence
conference, of all places) -- and it's easy to see why the poor girl got
the flu.
“ ''She probably needs to get laid,'' Spears says, rolling her eyes,
when asked about that trigger-happy governor's wife. ''These parents, they
think I'm a role model for their kids, that their kids look at me as some
sort of idol. But it's the parents' job to make sure their kids don't turn
out that shallow. It's the parents who should be teaching their kids how
to behave. That's not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your kid.''
”
Also from the same blog:
“They also don't want to walk around with a ring on their finger,
and have people say: "Married, eh? Man or woman?" ”
I seriously care about what “they” don’t
want, honest I do.
[lead from aoiko]
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour060104 |
06.01.2004 |
baby
sitting
“The electronics in Baby’s back monitor the quality of care
Baby receives. Baby reports the number of times each type of care was provided,
as well as wrong positioning, rough handling, Shaken Baby Syndrome, and
more.
“Baby weighs 6.5 to 7 pounds and is 21 inches long. Each Baby is
anatomically correct and available in six ethnic groups and seven skin tones.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour301203 |
30.12.2003 |
| affective
computing—computers to 'recognise' emotion
page1
page
2 page
3
“The only way to know if someone is truly enjoying themselves is
to see if the fold above the upper eyelid drops.”
—
“So, what if a computer could sight-read? A machine that understood
FACS would not only incorporate the best system for emotion perception,
it would speed up the process. It takes a human 100 minutes to notate the
emotions on one minute's worth of videotape. Ekman
would like to see computers get that down to near-real time. Under a Darpa
contract, Ekman and colleague Mark Frank of Rutgers are conducting work
that could lead to the automation of FACS.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour181203 |
18.12.2003 |
| educate
and save the planet—education is the best birth control known
“When a girl is without the knowledge and life skills that school
can provide, there are immediate and long-term effects. She is exposed to
many more risks than her educated counterparts and the consequences are
bequeathed to the next generation," UNICEF said in the report.
“In most industrialized countries as well as large parts of Latin
America, there was a "reverse gender gap" with boys dropping out
of school or getting low grades while girls did well in academic subjects,
the study said.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour141203 |
14.12.2003 |
| |
stop
the shallow anti-scientific scaremongering—and about time too!
“Governments must do more to educate people about scientific and
technological advances to counter misinformation and often unfounded fears
of risks to health and the environment, a free-market forum said Monday.
“Innovation in areas like e-commerce, nuclear power, stem cell research
and genetically modified crops offers huge growth potential, but public
confidence is vital......”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour121203 |
12.12.2003 |
| numeracy or
memorising formulae?
Most students do not do statisticss, and very few of those who do statistics
have much useful understanding of the formulae they calculate, merely repeating
the formulae back like a parrot.
Being able to follow a series of rules to obtain an ‘answer’
is not numeracy. The person has to learn to read numbers,
as they would read words, in order to be numerate.
The person must be able to spot a number that does not make sense, as easily
as they would spot a word in a sentence that does not make sense.
With the dreadful education systems in, at least, European countries, many
of people reach a stage where they can follow the rules (formulae), but have
not the slightest notion of the meanings of the numbers in the real world.
A numerate person can look at pictures of a car crash in a tunnel, and hear
the ‘reporter’ babbling about a 100 mph crash, and immediately
realise this is probably nonsense, that more likely the crash occured at about
60 mph.
A numerate person can listen to an idiot going on about how the economy of
the USA is in trouble because Iraq has switched its reserves into euros. The
numerate person will know it is nonsense because of the sheer size of the
US economy, the normal and rational size of a country’s monetary holdings,
and because they have an idea of the amount of money shifting each day in
the international markets.
An innumerate person immediately falls for the rubbish.
related material
Intelligence: misuse
and abuse of statistics
Cause,
chance and Bayesian statistics
The mechanics of inflation:
the great government swindle and how it works
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour191103 |
19.11.2003
related material
Intelligence: misuse
and abuse of statistics
Cause, chance
and Bayesian statistics
The mechanics of
inflation: the great government swindle and how it works |
new
observation—granny gorilla teaches daughter childcare
“Initially, Ione simply left her baby on the ground in front of
her 21-year-old mother, Alberta, who picked him up and handed him back.
When Ione made no move to take the baby, Alberta moved closer pushing the
newborn into his mother's face until she took him. Variations on this sequence
occurred several times in the first two days.
“By the third and fourth day, Ione was holding the baby......”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour161103 |
16.11.2003 |
teaching
science through topics that interest the student improves results—amazing!
“Lessons About Drugs, Nerve Gas Teach Students Biology And
Chemistry More Effectively
“ By developing lessons about cocaine, amphetamines, drug testing
and, nerve gas, a pharmacology professor and a chemistry teacher have discovered
that they can grab the attention of high school students to more effectively
teach them biology and chemistry.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour021103 |
02.11.2003 |
| |
openness
to stimuli requires organised intelligence
“The study in the September issue of the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open
to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people's brains
might shut out this same information through a process called "latent
inhibition" - defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to ignore
stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological
testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more
likely to have low levels of latent inhibition.
“This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the
extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says
co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal
person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that
object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative
person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities." ”
—
“ "Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity
seem linked," says Carson. "It appears likely that low levels
of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose
to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under
others."
“For example, during the early stages of diseases such as schizophrenia,
which are often accompanied by feelings of deep insight, mystical knowledge
and religious experience, chemical changes take place in which latent inhibition
disappears.”
related material
Why Aristotelian
logic does not work
Laying the foundations for
sound education
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour031003 |
03.10.2003
related material
Why Aristotelian
logic does not work
Laying the foundations for
sound education |
| early
work on identifying the costs of intelligence
“If intelligence were always a positive attribute, it would alway
s be selected for by natural selection. But it is not - people and animals
have their dolts as well as their Einsteins.
“To evolutionary biologists, that diversity means that theoretically,
there must be some cost to being smart. Now for the first time, researchers
have shown that in fruit flies at least, it doesn't always pay to be clever.”
—
“ They are slower at feeding," says Mery. He speculates that
the flies may have to invest more energy in making or re-arranging connections
between neurons in their brains, leaving them with less energy to forage
when calories are limited.”
The number of innovators who have been given a hard
time gives some indication of the social costs in human societies. It is clear
that the herd instinct (which has advantages) is at war with intelligence
and individuality....ab
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour290903 |
29.09.2003 |
| another
holocaust—the elimination of the plains indians
It looks slanted, but is an interesting window into American history.
Quotes from:
•Christopher Columbus •King Ferdinand •Captain John Smith
•The Pilgrims •John Winthrop •Peter Minuit •Francisco
Coronado •Don Juan Onate •Hernando DeSoto •Ponce de Leon
•General Jeffery Amherst •Georges de Buffon •Benjamin Franklin
•The Militia Men •George Washington •Thomas Jefferson •
Martin Van Buren •Daniel Boone •Andrew Jackson •Oliver Wendell
Holmes •John Sutter •Governor Leeland Stanford •Samuel Morton
•Horace Greeley • General Pope •Abraham Lincoln •Doctor
William Mayo •John Evans • Colonel John Milton Chivington •Colonel
George Shoup •U.S. Grant • General George Crook •Phillip
Sheridan •William T. Sherman • George Armstrong Custer •L.
Frank Baum •Mark Twain •"Pa" Engalls •Senator
Henry L. Dawes •The Donner Party •Theodore Roosevelt •Dr.
Saxon Pope •Gutzon Borglum •Harry S Truman •Ronald Reagan
•William Renquist •Rush Limbaugh •George W. Bush
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour190903 |
19.09.2003 |
| it’s
not fair—you gave him a cucumber!
“Monkeys strike for equal pay. They down tools if they see another
monkey get a bigger reward for doing the same job...”
—
“Only female monkeys show this pique, the researchers found.”
And
another version here
Matthew 19:30 - 20:16
19:30 But many [that are] first shall be last; and the last [shall be] first.
20:1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man [that is] an householder,
which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
20:2 And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent
them into his vineyard.
20:3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in
the marketplace,
20:4 And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right
I will give you. And they went their way.
20:5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.
20:6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle,
and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?
20:7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them,
Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, [that] shall ye receive.
20:8 So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward,
Call the labourers, and give them [their] hire, beginning from the last unto
the first.
20:9 And when they came that [were hired] about the eleventh hour, they received
every man a penny.
20:10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received
more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
20:11 And when they had received [it], they murmured against the goodman of
the house,
20:12 Saying, These last have wrought [but] one hour, and thou hast made them
equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
20:13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst
not thou agree with me for a penny?
20:14 Take [that] thine [is], and go thy way: I will give unto this last,
even as unto thee.
20:15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye
evil, because I am good?
20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called,
but few chosen.
Perhaps the ‘good man’ was one of those exploiting capitalists,
or a lawyer sticking to the contract?
I sure think he will end up with industrial relations problems.
I wonder what the Capuchins would have to say.
related material
De Waal,
Frans: Good Natured: the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
abelard’s
game theory section (Fehr’s interesting and useful site)
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour180903 |
updated
19.09.2003
related material
De Waal,
Frans: Good Natured: the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
abelard’s
game theory section (Fehr’s interesting and useful site) |
| home
at last—cash returns to carter
“no, I want her to have lots of flowers”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour130903 |
13.09.2003 |
|
a study in bad science, bad law, and the incendiary
mixture
“Skeptical inquiry is endangered when those who are offended or threatened
by knowledge are able to silence those who have something valuable to say.
The lawsuit path is crowded because those who take it face no negative consequences:
The worst that can happen to them is nothing at all-their target doesn't
budge. But often the targets of these threats, weary of being harassed,
unable to pay the costs of self-defense, frightened at the prospect of losing
their reputations, and unsupported by their publisher or university, do
back down.”
—
“ The growing power of IRBs [Institutional Review Boards] in academia,
along with the increasing number of restrictions on free speech in the politically
correct name of "speech codes" and "conduct codes" (described
so well by Alan Kors and Harvey Silverglate in The Shadow University), is
perilous for independent scientific inquiry. For years, the skeptical movement,
which had its birth in the domain of philosophy and the study of logic,
has tended to regard failures of skeptical and scientific thinking as failures
of reasoning-something amiss in human cognition. The underlying assumption
has been that if we can only get people to think straight, junk their cognitive
biases, and understand the basic principles and methods of science, pseudoscientific
reasoning will become as vestigial to the mind as the appendix is to the
body.
“Perhaps, but the skeptical movement needs also to focus its energies
on the growing institutional barriers to free inquiry, and the efforts to
silence those whose inquiries make waves. The story of what happened to
Elizabeth Loftus
and Mel Guyer when they set out to investigate the case of Jane Doe is itself
a case study of the high cost of skepticism. The two demonstrated exactly
the kind of openminded spirit of discovery that is at the heart of the skeptical
movement. For their pains, they found themselves in an Orwellian nightmare.
“The irony is that if Loftus and Guyer were journalists, they would
have done precisely the same investigation unhampered and fully supported
by their employer. But because they are university professors, they were
subjected to a secret, shadowy investigation of their legal right to do
what good reporters do every day. And their respective universities, far
from supporting their intellectual inquiries and their tenured (indeed American)
right to free speech, obstructed and harassed them.”
Investigating the case:
part
one part
two
This
excerpt is from an interview giving the current situation:
“What was the university's reaction?
“After more than 25 years there, they gagged me for a year and nine
months, and seized all my files on the case. I was shocked that the university
would respond that way. I was eventually exonerated but still felt bitter
about the experience. And then 10 months later I was offered a huge job
- a 50 per cent salary increase, huge resources, titled professorship, and
even then I still agonised about leaving my friends, my ex-husband whom
I'm still close to, but I took the job, at the University of California,
Irvine. The first thing I did was publish a detailed critique in Skeptical
Inquirer. And "Jane Doe" is suing for defamation as well as invasion
of privacy, and included Carol Tavris, who wrote an article supporting us,
in the suit.
“That's an expensive proposition, isn't it?
“When I had to defend myself in the university matter, I had to shell
out a lot of money. Fortunately now UC Irvine is behind me, and I also have
some defence from Skeptical Inquirer.”
related material
establishment
psycho-bunk 4 - repressed memory
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour090903 |
09.09.2003
related material
establishment
psycho-bunk 4 -
repressed memory |
| the
journal science forced into retraction on ecstasy study
“The study was based on the fact that laboratory monkeys and baboons
had a severe reaction to the drug when it was injected in small doses. But
it emerged this weekend that the vials of liquid did not contain ecstasy.
Instead, the animals received a dose of methamphetamine, or speed - a drug
widely known to affect the body's dopamine system. The tubes had somehow
been mislabelled by the supplier.”
This item is posted mainly as a caution to those who trust too readily, and
on the hazards of believing what you wish to believe.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour080903 |
08.09.2003 |
| modern
witchcraft
“ Why do patients get forcibly admitted? Because they refuse treatment.
And why do they refuse? Because lots of psychiatric treatment is crap, it
is abusive and horrible. ”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour310803 |
31.08.2003 |
| telling
lice—the start of human clothing
“We started wearing clothes about 70,000 years ago - at least according
to our lice genes.”
—
“ Stoneking's team compared DNA from head and body lice. The greater
the difference in sequences between two species, the older their split.
The researchers set their clock by comparing human and chimpanzee lice,
which probably stopped interbreeding at the same time as their hosts, about
5.5 million years ago.
“African lice are more genetically diverse than those from anywhere
else, showing that, like humans, the species originated in Africa. And head
lice are more diverse than body lice, showing that they are the older group.
“Humans have a third louse, the crab or pubic louse, which clings
to body hair. Stoneking's team is now looking at pubic louse genes in the
hope of working out when our ancestors lost their body hair, cutting these
lower lice off from their relatives.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour240803 |
24.08.2003 |
| japanese
sh!t spreaders—the tricky monkey strikes again
“"I forget how much, but it was a whole lot. I think about
100 kg (220 lb)," Takao Maeda of JR West in Shingu, some 450 km (280
miles) west of Tokyo, said yesterday.
"They sort of mixed it with water and then spread it along the tracks."
”
I wonder whether they have worked out that this could end with separate deer
breeding populations on each side of the tracks.
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour220803 |
22.08.2003 |
| why
languages die
“As civilizations die, so do their forms of writing, top scholars
of ancient cultures found in the first study to examine the extinction of
writing systems. The research also showed that ancient writing systems are
connected to the ruling classes and religions of the societies they are
used to depict.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour100803 |
10.08.2003 |
| effective
networking
Perception and motivation influence social networks
“An e-mail experiment has confirmed the famous 'six degrees of separation'
of human social networks, but revealed that individuals don't necessarily
benefit from their connectedness.”
—
“ The exercise seems to shows that even if global social networks
can be searched quite easily, a searcher may not exploit this asset unless
he realizes the strength of his connectedness and has sufficient motive
to make the effort.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour090803 |
09.08.2003 |
|
|
the
decline of the intrusive society
[This item is recommended reading]
The end of the old fogeys, and the young ones too!
“The
latest British Social Attitudes report shows not only that we
are all getting more tolerant over time, but that younger people are getting
more tolerant even faster than older ones. Of people born between 1960 and
1969, 17 per cent thought that homosexuality was not wrong at all in 1985,
but 47 per cent believe it now: a rise of 30 percentage points. Among people
born between 1930 and 1939, this tolerant position rose by 14 points. The
oldest (over 80 now) have seen a rise of just 4 points.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour060703 |
06.07.2003 |
| manipulating
people with ersatz ‘friendship’
How do you know whether your partners loves you, or if they are just pretending?
If they pretend for long enough, are they then being ‘loving’?
“Waitresses who copy their customers' behaviour get substantially
bigger tips than those who don't, [...]”
—
“ But this is just one of a battery of ploys that waiting staff can
use to increase customers' generosity. Other studies have shown that smiling,
greeting and touching the customer, and crouching down beside them while
taking orders also lead to bigger tips.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour040703 |
04.07.2003 |
| biting
comment
More human idiocy:
“"Human bites make up between 2% and 23% of all bite wounds,
with 15% to 20% of them being to the head and neck. Common sites for human
bites include the hands, arms and shoulders in men, and the breasts, genitalia,
legs and arms in women.
“Most of these bites result from fighting, but sports accidents and
sexual activity are other sources of injury. And biting is seasonal - in
the United States at least – increasing during the spring and summer
and on weekends.”
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour270603 |
27.06.2003 |
| a
moderately introspective pigeon
I am marginally disinclined to place these two reports on my news service,
but coming across both on the same day, I thought it useful to highlight the
blindingly obvious.
“Shy
toddlers are likely to grow into shy adults whose emotional inhibitions
put them at greater risk of developing more serious mental disturbances
in later life, a 20-year study has found.”
“Adolescents
are more vulnerable than any other age group to developing nicotine,
alcohol and other drug addictions because the regions of the brain that
govern impulse and motivation are not yet fully formed, Yale researchers
have found.”
In both cases, wise handling of the young can teach them how to handle themselves
according to their personality and propensities. The differences in personality
that can lead to these and other problems are part of life’s rich pattern.
Teaching the ‘shy’ to enjoy a quiet life, and teaching the impulsive
the need for self-control, is part of any normal sane child-rearing. Each
person can enjoy or tolerate living in their own skin.
To treat these differences as if they are ‘medical’ or ‘personality’
‘problems’ misses the point.
All people need nurturing and education within the community. A sensitivity
to, and acceptance of, differences should be part of any parental or teacher
training.
No, I did not say it was always easy, but that is what makes it ‘interesting’.
All the young need advice and guidance, and often just to be left alone to
think, to experiment and learn, as any moderately introspective pigeon you
may meet will readily tell you.
related material
genes and behaviour
educational
errors
drugs, smoking and addiction
the web address for this article is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour5.htm#behaviour210603 |
21.06.2003
related material
genes and
behaviour
educational
errors
drugs, smoking and addiction |
