Prometheus 6

Another factor is the weakening of natural selection. “In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to 21.” 

Leading geneticist Steve Jones says human evolution is over

Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert.

Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones, of University College London.

Speaking today at a UCL lecture entitled “Human evolution is over” Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution – natural selection, mutation and random change. “Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns,” Professor Jones told The Times.

The End of Aggressive Ignorance?
By Susan J. Douglas

How surreal is life right now? Between a right-wing, government-loathing president insisting on bringing socialism to Wall Street, a Chatty Cathy doll (Remember those? You pulled a cord and they said the same five things) running for vice president, polls showing that still — still! — people give McCain the edge on national security issues. And the TV pundits, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claim that the first presidential debate was “a tie.” You start to feel like you’ve shot down that rabbit hole with Alice and may never get out. I mean, really, the country seems to have gone crazy.

Nevertheless, there is a war being waged now, in the waning days of the Bush administration and the campaign, against the triumph of aggressive ignorance, a fabulous term I’m stealing from my nephew.

Scientists debate how common these citizen enforcers are, and whether an urge to punish infractions amounts to an overall gain or loss, given that it is costly for both parties. But recent research suggests that in individuals, the fairness instinct is a highly variable psychological impulse, rising and falling in response to what is happening in the world. And there is strong evidence that it hardens in times of crisis and uncertainty, like the current one....

“The urge to take revenge or punish cheaters,” said Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” “is not a disease or toxin or sign that something has gone wrong. From the point of view of evolution, it’s not a problem but a solution.”

Citizen Enforcers Take Aim
By BENEDICT CAREY

Last month a Georgia woman named DeShan Fishel was driving near a school and saw a Jeep rush past a stop signal on a school bus, clipping a 5-year-old boy. The other driver sped away.

Ms. Fishel whipped a U-turn and gave chase. She stayed with the Jeep on surface streets and caught the driver on a highway in Dawson County, Ga., making him pull over. She watched the driver until police officers arrived.

“All I could think about was that little kid, getting hit, and this person getting away with it,” Ms. Fishel said at a news conference. “It just really upset me.”

The public urge for punishment that helped delay the passage of Washington’s economic rescue plan is more than a simple case of Wall Street loathing, according to scientists who study the psychology of forgiveness and retaliation. The fury is based in instincts that have had a protective and often stabilizing effect on communities throughout human history. Small, integrated groups in particular often contain members who will stand up and — often at significant risk to themselves — punish cheaters, liars and freeloaders.

The Silence of our Friends spoke up...

Though I'd be more likely to use it with scotch or Irish whiskey. I've never even been tempted to pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine but I have paid $80 or so for a 21 year old single malt.

Ultrasound machine 'turns cheap plonk into fine wine in 30 minutes'
An entrepreneur claims to have invented a machine that turns a cheap bottle of plonk into a vintage-tasting wine in a matter of minutes.
By Nick Britten
Last Updated: 3:01PM BST 01 Oct 2008

Inventor Casey Jones says the £350 gadget uses ultrasound technology to recreate the effects of decades of ageing by colliding alcohol molecules inside the bottle.

The Ultrasonic Wine Ager, which looks like an ordinary ice bucket, takes 30 minutes to work and has already been given the thumbs up by an English winemaker.

Betcha Scalia will change his mind about using decisions by foreign courts as precedent after reading this...

Russia's Last Czar Exonerated By Court
Ruling a Victory For Descendants
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 2, 2008; A18

MOSCOW, Oct. 1 -- Russia's Supreme Court on Wednesday recognized the nation's last czar, Nicholas II, and his family as victims of "groundless repression," formally rehabilitating the Romanovs more than 90 years after their execution in a basement in the eastern Urals signaled the Soviet embrace of terror as state policy.

The court ruling is the latest act in Russia's reinterpretation of history following the fall of the communist government in 1991. Many of the tens of millions of people shot or sent to prison camps under communist rule were officially exonerated after the Soviet collapse, but the government had long resisted that step for the autocrat the Soviets once vilified as "Bloody Nicholas."

5 Insane Devices From Kids Cartoons (That Actually Exist)
By E. Kelly

Some people watch Wile E Coyote strap himself to a giant rocket and say, "Why?" Inventors watch the same thing and say, "Why not?"

This is a tribute to the brave dreamers and engineers who are working hard to bring to market the kind of products previously only found in cartoons and ACME catalogs. Such as...

Illinois woman accused of bartending in the buff
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DELHI, Ill. (AP) -- Here's a tip: Bartending nude can get you arrested.

Sheriff's deputies doing a routine check this week at a southern Illinois bar say they discovered a not-so-routine sight. Authorities allege that 33-year-old Janet Brannon was naked while serving bar patrons at the Cabin Tavern in Delhi.

Could an Inner Zombie Be Controlling Your Brain?
09.08.2008
Scientists have found evidence that the self-aware part of our brains isn't always in charge.
by Carl Zimmer

If you had to sum up the past 40 years of research on the mind, you could do worse than to call it the Rise of the Zombies.

We like to see ourselves as being completely conscious of our thought processes, of how we feel, of the decisions we make and our reasons for making them. When we act, it is our conscious selves doing the acting. But starting in the late 1960s, psychologists and neurologists began to find evidence that our self-aware part is not always in charge. Researchers discovered that we are deeply influenced by perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and desires about which we have no awareness. Their research raised the disturbing possibility that much of what we think and do is thought and done by an unconscious part of the brain—an inner zombie.

Free Will versus the Programmed Brain
If our actions are determined by prior events, then do we have a choice about anything—or any responsibility for what we do?
By Shaun Nichols

Many scientists and philosophers are convinced that free will doesn’t exist at all. According to these skeptics, everything that happens is determined by what happened before—our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action—and this fact makes it impossible for anyone to do anything that is truly free. This kind of anti-free will stance stretches back to 18th century philosophy, but the idea has recently been getting much more exposure through popular science books and magazine articles. Should we worry? If people come to believe that they don’t have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility?

from Anxiety Culture's Propaganda page.

Why don't I have a girlfriend?

This is a question that practically every male has asked himself at one point or another in his life. Unfortunately, there is rarely a hard and fast answer to the query. Many men try to reason their way through the dilemma nonetheless, often reaching a series of ridiculous explanations, each more self-deprecating than the last: "Is it because I'm too shy, and not aggressive enough? Is it my opening lines? Am I a boring person? Am I too fat or too thin? Or am I simply ugly and completely unattractive to women?" When all other plausible explanations have been discounted, most fall back on the time-honoured conclusion that "there must be Something Wrong™ with me" before resigning themselves to lives of perpetual chastity.

P6 is the second link returned for the Google query "certificates of bullshit."

I'm sorry, I saw the link come in and found it funny. The first link that was returned worked for me too.

Posting is slow today because I'm actually thinking. It's coming, though. Meanwhile, here's some stuff to keep you busy.

I'm going to try it for a week or so before I say it sucks.

Star Wars Jedi Knights course offered by Queen's University Belfast
A university is offering a course that will use the psychology of the Star Wars Jedi Knights to teach students communication skills and personal development.
By Tom Peterkin
Last Updated: 4:48PM BST 11 Sep 2008

The UK's first Jedi course is on offer at Queen's University Belfast in November and hopes to attract Star Wars fans and introduce them to the joys of continuing their education through open learning.

According to its publicity material, the course 'Feel the Force: How to Train in the Jedi Way' teaches the "real-life psychological techniques behind Jedi mind tricks".

It also claims to examine the "wider issues behind the Star Wars universe, like balance, destiny, dualism, fatherhood and fascism".

No prior qualifications are required and the blurb informs students that "light sabres are not provided".

The International Dining Etiquitte Quiz.

I can think os so many ways to frustrate the very attempt...like walking with someone close enough that your shadows overlap. Or on a crowded street. Or on irregular ground.

Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk
04 September 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition.

Nearly seven years after Osama Bin Laden disappeared, US intelligence agencies are still chasing his shadow. And shadows are precisely what they should be looking for, says NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise.

Monogamy gene found in people
22:00 01 September 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Priya Shetty

What if you could tell whether a man is husband material just by peering at his genes?

There has been speculation about the role of the hormone vasopressin in humans ever since we discovered that variations in where receptors for the hormone are expressed makes prairie voles strictly monogamous but meadow voles promiscuous; vasopressin is related to the "cuddle chemical" oxytocin. Now it seems variations in a section of the gene coding for a vasopressin receptor in people help to determine whether men are serial commitment-phobes or devoted husbands.

On September 7th, 2003, President Bush announced on national television that he was going to ask the Congress to grant him an additional $87 billion dollars for the fiscal year, beginning October 1, 2004, to continue the fight on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since before then, to the end of September, 2007, the United States has dedicated approximately $315 billion dollars to the cause.

But these amounts of money are an impossible for anyone to visualize. Let's have a look....