bonobos
gregladen | September 8, 2011Why is it so hard to understand a commonplace thing like orgasms?I think I know why science does not understand the female orgasm. It is because science excels when it breaks free of context, history, human complexities and anthropology, but when a topic requires one to grasp context, history, human complexities and anthropology, then science, especially the hard sciences, can fall short. Also, the nature of the female orgasm is a comparative question, but human sexuality is highly (but not entirely) derived; It is difficult to make a sensible graph or table comparing aspects of sexuality…
ddobbs | September 22, 2009
Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates.
Tara Smith explains why she'll be getting her kids their (seasonal) flu vaccines. Revere does likewise
Daniel Menaker, former honcho at Random House, defends the midlist. (Where was he when my book was getting so much push?)
Just in case you missed it, lack of insurance is killing 45,000 people a year (Times) in the U.S. This doesn't include preventable deaths among the underinsured (like yours truly, who is sitting on some surgery that he'd rather put behind him). You can download the…
edyong | March 26, 2008Would you gamble on a safe bet for the promise of something more? Would you risk losing everything for the possibility of greater rewards? In psychological experiments, humans tend to play it safe when we stand to gain something - we're more likely to choose a certain reward over a larger but riskier one. Now, we're starting to understand how our two closest relatives deal with risk - bonobos, like us, tend to be risk-averse while chimpanzees usually play the odds.
Sarah Heilbronner from Harvard University studied the attitudes of five chimps and five bonobos to risky decisions. All the…