Voice reveals male strength

Some Santa Barbara researchers report:

Recent research has shown that humans, like many other animals, have a specialization for assessing fighting ability from visual cues. Because it is probable that the voice contains cues of strength and formidability that are not available visually, we predicted that selection has also equipped humans with the ability to estimate physical strength from the voice. We found that subjects accurately assessed upper-body strength in voices taken from eight samples across four distinct populations and language groups ...

These results provide, to our knowledge, the first direct evidence that both men and women can accurately assess men's physical strength from the voice, and suggest that estimates of strength are used to assess fighting ability.

You would think that voice would depend on innate factors, and would not have anything to do with how much time you spend pumping iron in the gym. I have noticed that there seem to be some correlations between voices and occupations, and between voices and personality types. Maybe that will get tested next.

Evidence for animal mindreading

Ohio State research:

Scientists have caught male topi antelopes in the act of faking fear in front of females in heat as a way to improve their chances of having sex.

The male antelopes, observed in southwest Kenya, send a false signal that a predator is nearby only when females in heat are in their territories. When the females react to the signal, they remain in the territory long enough for some males to fit in a quick mating opportunity.

The signal in this case, an alarm snort, is not a warning to other antelopes to beware, but instead tells a predator that it has been seen and lost its element of surprise, the researchers found.

So when the scientists observed the animals misusing the snort in the presence of sexually receptive females, they knew they were witnessing the practice of intentional deception – a trait typically attributed only to humans and a select few other animal species.

The full paper is here.

This is an argument for animal mindreading, but I am not convinced. The authors claim that the topi snort for two reasons -- scaring lions and tricking females.

But the topi intentions in both cases are dubious. The topi may have no idea that the lions are scared, or that the females are tricked. The topi may snort because experience or instinct indicates that snorting gets him what he wants. The topi just wants to eat, avoid lions, and mate. Snorting doesn't get the topi any food, but it helps with those other two things. This simpler hypothesis may be all there is to it.

Human often do things with deceptive effects, without any deceptive purpose. Animals are much less self-aware, and maybe not self-aware at all. The obvious hypothesis is that the animals don't know what they are doing, and yet the paper does not even consider the possibility.

In other so-called deception, Sean B. Carroll writes that insects "display false eye and face patterns that mimic those of snakes, lizards or other animals."

Testing skin color bias with dolls

An anthropology blog writes:

Light- and dark-colored dolls have long been used to study how children acquire negative attitudes to dark skin. ... A doll test typically involves asking a child to choose between a lighter-colored doll and a darker-colored one. ... The first doll studies are well known today, even among non-academics.

You might think that these experiments show how kids learn racial prejudice from their parents. But there have been a lot of studies, and they do not show that at all. The preferences depend on age and sex, but are similar throughout the world regardless of what the kids are taught.

Hockey is a great sport

We just had another great Stanley Cup championship. Here are a few reasons why hockey is a great sport.

The action is fast in hockey. Basketball and soccer seem like slow-motion in comparison.

Hockey is intense.

Hockey players are tough. A Blackhawk player lost 7 teeth in a playoff game last month, and finished the game.

Hockey games are well-officiated. Using replays when necessary, the referees almost never get a goal wrong. Players do not fake being fouled in order to draw penalties.

Hockey favors all-around athletes. It is not like basketball favoring the tall and football favoring the big.

Hockey has sensible rules. Other sports have weird rules that disrupt the action, reward the wrong players, give the referee too much control over the game.

Empathy is the latest political buzzword

Last year, Pres. Barack Obama was justifying his Supreme Court appointment on the grounds that she had empathy, and people wondered why that was so important for a judge. Now the situation is reversed. Obama latest court appointment does not have any empathy to brag about, and Obama now has his own Katrina because of his own lack of empathy for Louisiana.

A blog comments:

I happened to catch The Bill Maher Show the other night and overheard a discussion about President Obama's handling of the Gulf disaster. Regardless of one's perception of how well or poorly Obama has done, Maher said, he lacks 'the empathy gene.'

I found the observation particularly astute. Obama does lack the empathy gene and reminds me of what I've read about President Woodrow Wilson.

The Wash. Post reports:

President Obama recorded his weekly Internet address from Grand Isle, La., on Friday, with a message of empathy for the people of the Gulf Coast who are suffering from the effects of the oil spill.

I am sure Obama's advisors are studying Bill Clinton's tapes where he would say, "I feel your pain", and speak of tears.

I just don't think that the public is any judge of empathy anyway. Millions of voters were fooled into thinking that John Edwards had empathy. He seemed like the phoniest of the presidential candidates to me. By the time these politicians get on the national stage, all of their emotions are faked.

Caffeine addicts get no real perk

Reuters reports:

Bristol University researchers found that drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing and the stimulating effects of caffeine, meaning that it only brings them back to baseline levels of alertness, not above them.

"Although frequent consumers feel alerted by caffeine, especially by their morning tea, coffee, or other caffeine-containing drink, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal," wrote the scientists, led by Peter Rogers of Bristol's department of experimental psychology.

The team asked 379 adults -- half of them non/low caffeine consumers and the other half medium/high caffeine consumers -- to give up caffeine for 16 hours, and then gave them either caffeine or a dummy pill known as a placebo.

Participants rated their levels of anxiety, alertness and headache. The medium/high caffeine consumers who got the placebo reported a decrease in alertness and increased headache, neither of which were reported by those who received caffeine.

But measurements showed that their post-caffeine levels of alertness were actually no higher than the non/low consumers who received a placebo, suggesting caffeine only brings coffee drinkers back up to "normal."

The researchers also found that people who have a genetic predisposition to anxiety do not tend to avoid coffee.

In fact, people in the study with a gene variant associated with anxiety tended to consume slightly larger amounts of coffee than those without it, Rogers wrote in a study in the Neuropsychopharmacology journal, published by Nature.

This suggests that a mild increase in anxiety "may be a part of the pleasant buzz caused by caffeine," he said.

I wonder how many coffee drinkers realize that they are mainly just easing their addiction withdrawal symptoms.

Life sentence for lewd behavior

If you don't believe that we have draconian penalties for sex crimes, check out this case:

Michelle Lyn Taylor received life sentence for forcing a boy to touch her breasts last week in Elko.

A video shows the sentencing arguments. The Nevada state law requires the life sentence.

Usually men get these sentences. There are murderers who have gotten less.

The jury verdict was for lewd behavior. The jury may have thought that the sentence would be probation or something like that. If you are ever on a jury, you might want to find out what the penalty is for the crime being charged.

Nutrition causes obesity

Today's bad advice:

Dear Annie: "Grossed Out in the Silver State" was upset about overweight people wearing ill-fitting clothes ...

It is well known that poor nutrition is a class issue. Many people have trouble eating well because they cannot afford healthy, fresh ingredients, or they don't have the time to prepare home-cooked meals. Eating right and exercising is easy when you have the time and resources, ...

Dear Massachusetts: We agree that poor nutrition and insufficient funds can make it difficult to maintain a healthy weight, even though jogging around the block doesn't require a lot of time or resources. What would help is for people to be better educated about the dangers of fast food and processed foods ...

No, they have it backwards. Obesity results from too much nutrition, not too little. Fresh ingredients and home-cooked meals are just as fattening as the alternatives. No one ever got fat from not being able to afford nutritious food.

Suspiciousness explained

Wired magazine reports:

A dose of testosterone might be enough to save gullible types from being ripped off, a new study reveals.

Testosterone is linked to aggression, competition and social status. Now scientists have found that the hormone also reduces naive individuals’ confidence in others.

This could explain why women are more gullible than men.

Pediatricians Flip Stance On Toddler Swim Class

AP reports:

CHICAGO -- The nation's largest pediatricians group is relaxing its stance against swimming lessons for children younger than 4.

A few small studies now suggest toddlers may be less likely to drown if they've had swim lessons.

These pediatricians issue a lot of unscientific opinions. They have no expertise on teaching toddlers to swim. Do it or don't do it as you please, but ignore the pediatricians.

Limits to using Google

More and more people seem to think that Google is the source of all the world's info.

From today's Meet the Press on NBC TV:

MR. WOODWARD: It, it, it is a potentially a giant disaster of the--I mean, most disasters come and go. 9/11 came and went, OK. This continues. And I, I picked, I picked up your newspaper on Saturday and had half a smile because it said, "BP steps up its effort," and then I read on, "to criticize others and point the finger at others, and blame everyone." Where are, you know, why don't they call in Google? Why don't they call in some of the people who have these great minds to fix it?

No, Google does not know how to cap a deep sea oil leak. Google may help you find trivia like a movie star's birthday, but not this.

The stem cell hoax

NPR has this Stem Cell Research Update. In case you were thinking that the Pres. Obama administration would make stem cell cures possible, it hasn't happened. According to this program, Pres. Bush funded research on 23 embryonic stem cell lines. Pres. Obama allows 64 lines, but some lines are only approved for restricted purposes, and not all of the Bush 23 lines has been approved. No embryonic stem cell therapies have been approved for even clinical trials.

The whole idea that Bush stifled good stem cell cures was all a big hoax. There might be some therapies some day, but we are not getting them any sooner because of Obama's policies.

Even birds do not like organic food

Nwe food research:

Is organic food everything its advocates claim to be? A new study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture describes an experiment in which the subjects were free from human biases. The authors found that wild birds preferred 'normal' bird food to the organic option. ...

In an attempt to explain this disparity, the researchers analyzed the seeds and found that the conventional seed contained upwards of 10 percent more protein per seed, most likely due to the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers used in conventional farming techniques.

Organic food is not necessarily better.

Defining stupidity

This video ofMiss Teen USA 2007 has been view 50 million times, and Miss South Carolina's answer to a question has become the modern example of stupidity.

I don't see it that way. The video is amusing, but I say that the questioner is the real idiot. The teenaged girl is asked to comment on a claimed fact that is actually completely false. The question is unfair and she is not prepared for it under such high pressure. But what is the questioner's excuse? The questioner had plenty of time to research a question that made sense.

Miss South Carolina 2007 could be smart girl who happened to get flustered under pressure. But I am not sure that there is much hope for the questioner, the pageant officials, and all the pundits who ridiculed her without noticing how bad the question was.

Just one accusation away

Lenore Skenazy writes:

Let us remember this when we look up our local sex offender maps and see two convicts: One who ostensibly exposes himself to children and one who ostensibly assaults them. ...

I spoke to the actual mom of these two young men. She's a fishing net-maker in Maine and she put it pretty succinctly: "We're all just one accusation away from the sex offender registry."

Read the column to see how innocent and trivial these offenses were. The sex offender registry now has so many falsely-accused names on it that it is useless for preventing sex crimes.

Genetic determinism in the news

I don't expect the NY Times to promote genetic determinism, but it has recent articles on how genes determine desirability of human eggs, happy marriages, and crime. Then there is the news that non-Africans have Neanderthal genes, whatever that means.

This study also got a lot of press:

"The greater the age difference, the lower the wife's life expectancy," Sven Drefahl of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, said. "The best choice for a woman is to marry a man of exactly the same age."

Drefahl believed that having a relationship with a younger man may mean more stress for women because they are "violating social norms and thus suffer from social sanctions," which could result in a more stressful life, he said.

A "sugar daddy" with a wife seven to nine years his junior is seven percent less likely to die early — probably because she's more likely to nurse him in old age.

The explanations are ridiculous and unsupported. A woman who marries an older man has probably sized him up as being particularly healthy, and that is why he lives longer.

Moral loan default

The NY Times reported in Jan.:

Some homeowners may keep paying because they think it’s immoral to default. This view has been reinforced by government officials like former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who while in office said that anyone who walked away from a mortgage would be “simply a speculator — and one who is not honoring his obligation.” (The irony of a former investment banker denouncing speculation seems to have been lost on him.)

But does this really come down to a question of morality?

A provocative paper by Brent White, a law professor at the University of Arizona, makes the case that borrowers are actually suffering from a “norm asymmetry.” In other words, they think they are obligated to repay their loans even if it is not in their financial interest to do so, while their lenders are free to do whatever maximizes profits. It’s as if borrowers are playing in a poker game in which they are the only ones who think bluffing is unethical.

A business prof debates White here.

There is a legal fiction that a contract is a legal agreement where the parties understand the terms. And yet millions of people sign mortgage contracts with basic misunderstandings about their legal obligations to pay.

Law schools teach classes on contracts. The subject is not difficult, but the law defines a contract in way that would surprise anyone who has never been to law school.

Dyslexia a cruel fiction leading to crime

A London UK Times article reported last year:

A Labour MP has provoked anger among literacy campaigners by calling dyslexia a “cruel fiction” that can often lead to criminal behaviour.

Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Manchester Blackley, wrote in his column for Manchester Confidential magazine: “Dyslexia is a cruel fiction, it is no more real than the 19th-century scientific construction of ‘the aether’ to explain how light travels through a vacuum.”

Bad analogy. The term aether went out of favor in the early 20th century, but since about 1940 the concept has been essential to understanding how light travels thru a vacuum. Quantum field theory teaches that there is no such thing as a vacuum, and what we call the vacuum is actually filled with particles that are essential to the propagation of light.

In the same column, Mr Stringer argued: “The reason that so many children fail to read and write is because the wrong teaching methods are used.” He accused Ed Balls, the Education Minister, of wasting nearly £80million in disability benefits given to dyslexic children, when government policy should target an overhaul of the way that children are taught to read.

Mr Stringer pointed to the synthetic phonics method of teaching, whereby children were taught to associate letters with their phonetic pronunciation (reading “ee” for “y”, for example).

He said: “It is time that the dyslexia industry was killed off and we recognised that there are well known methods for teaching everybody to read and write.”

He has a point there. Phonics has been shown to be a superior method for teaching reading, but most schools don't use it.

Cheese sandwich confiscated

The UK Times reports:

Yet the impossible has happened: staff at a nursery in Pemberton, near Wigan, have confiscated a cheese sandwich belonging to a two-year-old pupil, Jack Ormisher. Its failing was to contain neither lettuce nor tomato.

Wigan Council has since confirmed that the straight-up combination of cheese and bread contravenes its healthy eating guidelines — and fully supported the cheese-snatchers. “The centre has a list of recommended healthy food, according to national guidelines, which children are encouraged to eat,” said a spokesman. “A cheese sandwich would not feature on the list.”

Unsurprisingly, Jack cried. He is now recovering. His mother sensibly moved him to a new, more cheese-friendly establishment.

First they came for the cheese sandwiches, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a cheese sandwich.

More evidence that fat is good for you

Scientific American reports:

Eat less saturated fat: that has been the take-home message from the U.S. government for the past 30 years. But while Americans have dutifully reduced the percentage of daily calories from saturated fat since 1970, the obesity rate during that time has more than doubled, diabetes has tripled, and heart disease is still the country’s biggest killer. Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit. Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year. ...

The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. That idea is “based in large measure on extrapolations, which are not supported by the data,” Krauss says.

Yes, the Atkins crowd has been saying this for decades. The science behind cholesterol has never matched the physicians' recommendations.