emjohnson | October 18, 2009Grand evolutionary dramas about human origins capture our imagination and the stories provide context as to how we view ourselves. They are the scientific version of creation myths. However, unlike Adam and Eve being fashioned in the garden or humanity being vomited up by the giant Mbombo (as the Bakuba people of Congo believed), scientific origin stories are rigorously critiqued based on the best available evidence.
Friedrich Engels, a sociologist and future collaborator with Karl Marx, wrote one of the earliest scientific human origin tales in 1876. In his essay "The Part Played by…
emjohnson | October 18, 2009Classical literature has judged Helen of Troy harshly. Because she chose Paris after having children with Menelaus, her chroniclers condemn her for the destruction of a great society. In Homer's Odyssey the bard writes:
Helen would never have yielded herself to a man from a foreign country, if she had known that the sons of Achaeans would come after her and bring her back. Heaven put it in her heart to do wrong, and she gave no thought to that sin, which has been the source of all our sorrows.
This has been the tradition in Western society. An open female sexuality has been viewed as…
emjohnson | October 16, 2009Three products that profit on male insecurities (Enzyte, Viagra and Tiger Penis Wine)
Note: the third image is from a campaign to encourage people to stop, not an actual ad.
In my earlier posts I explored why women experience menopause and discussed the Grandmother Hypothesis as a leading explanation. There is accumulating evidence that suggests reproductive senescence in women is an adaptation promoting inclusive fitness. However, there are many claims that menopause also occurs in men. There's even a fancy name for it: andropause.
A quick Google search reveals an onslaught of online "…
emjohnson | October 15, 2009There may need to be a significant revision in the recent description of one of humanity's oldest ancestors. Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" for short), the 4.4 million year old hominid fossil discovery, has been a godsend to paleoanthropologists (pun intended). But one of the key researchers has made what could be a serious error in his interpretation.
Christopher Ryan, who writes for Psychology Today at his blog Sex at Dawn (also the title of his forthcoming book) has discovered evidence that could undermine Owen Lovejoy's argument about human sexual evolution ever since Ardi:
In a…
emjohnson | October 14, 2009The Primate Diaries will have been at its new home here at ScienceBlogs for three months this coming Halloween. I know there are a considerable number of regular readers but from where I sit you're all a faceless mob, sitting invisibly out there in the impenetrable dark. I'd like to turn on the houselights for a moment and see who you are.
If you've commented before please introduce yourself and tell me your interests. If you haven't commented before, now's your chance. One of the great things about social media is the interaction between author and audience. The author may offer…
emjohnson | October 13, 2009In my earlier post I discussed the "Grandmother Hypothesis" as an explanation for human reproductive senescence, or menopause. A problem arises in understanding why women forgo one-third (and sometimes as much as one-half) of their reproductive lives, a condition unique in the natural world. Could this just be a neutral mutation, an artifact of longer human lives, or might it be a product of natural selection? If the latter, what selection pressure(s) could result in this unique human adaptation? The grandmother hypothesis posits that women who stopped ovulating in their golden years were…
emjohnson | October 12, 2009This, of course, refers to the famous remarks (almost four days old now) in which Richard Dawkins' suggestion that there be a separation of church and state in public schools was shouted down by O'Reilly's claim that he was imposing fascism.
Poor Winston Smith. When Orwell wrote his novel there was only a three minute hate. Now FOXNews runs 24 hours a day.Watch the full "interview" here.
emjohnson | October 12, 2009
"Babul" performed by Shubha Mudgal is a gorgeously produced music video that emphasizes the heartbreak of female domestic violence as seen through the eyes of a child.
According to Amnesty International:
In this video about female domestic abuse, a child walks through a party in which all the adult couples seem happy as they socialize. But as she looks at three of the couples, she sees the humiliation and violence with which each woman has been treated prior to arriving at the party. The video was produced by Breakthrough TV an organization dedicated to dealing with social problems in…
emjohnson | October 12, 2009Whether they're referred to as hot flashes, power surges or personal summers, the experience of menopause is not fun. But could it be the result of human evolution?
One of the most fascinating areas of research in evolutionary studies is the question of reproductive senescence. Why do women go through menopause? Chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest evolutionary relatives who we share 99% of our DNA with, are reproductive throughout their lifespans but human women can spend the last third of their lives infertile. Why?
Biologist Virpi Lummaa, whose recent work on evolutionary theory and birth…
emjohnson | October 11, 2009
You know, it could work. Consider the Vatican's net worth as reported by Paul Velelli in the London Independent:
⢠The Vatican Bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione, manages £2bn of assets. It does not reveal its profits or dividends, which are paid directly to the Pope. It enjoys the status of a central bank and has a dealing room adorned with crucifixes and papal portraits where 20 traders work.
⢠Despite the Vatican's assets, including the art collection in the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, it relies heavily on support from American dioceses.
⢠The Pope owns more than 1,…
emjohnson | October 10, 2009
In the classic film Casablanca, the drama hinges on Ilsa's choice between two men: her kind and supportive husband or her rugged and passionate ex-lover. In a moment of abandon, Ilsa returns to her lover's arms only to later change her mind and choose the more stable life she would have with her long-term partner. But what if something as simple as a pill had caused Ilsa to feel differently and make the opposite choice?
In a new paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution biologists Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lummaa at the University of Sheffield in England raise the possibility…
emjohnson | October 10, 2009Bidding opens soon and I think the chances are good that we could nail this one. Top contenders so far are Azerbaijan and Sierra Leone. Chicago has some issues with government corruption and public safety, which is why it's currently in third place.
The Silly Olympics From Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
emjohnson | October 9, 2009In Aztec cosmology, Venus was associated with the god Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (Nahuatl for "Lord of the Dawn"). In the mythic tale Legend of the Suns, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli attempted to shoot the sun with an arrow, but he missed and shot himself instead. The Aztecs had a sophisticated science of astronomy that focused on the movements of Venus and were among the first in the world to calculate that Earth's nearest neighbor orbited the Sun thirteen times every eight years.
Thirteen Venus cycles ago, then-President Bush shot his own arrow in the form of his Afghanistan invasion and it has now…
emjohnson | October 7, 2009Researchers from Simon Fraser University, just a stone's throw from where I sit in Vancouver, have determined that the side effects from this endocrine disruptor can alter children's behavior:
Researchers have just linked prenatal exposure to bisphenol-A - a near-ubiquitous industrial chemical - with subtle, gender-specific alterations in behavior among two year olds. Girls whose mothers had encountered the most BPA early in pregnancy tended to become somewhat more aggressive than normal, boys became more anxious and withdrawn.
Another recent study, by Joe Braun of the University of North…
emjohnson | October 6, 2009This is painful to watch. If you can make it through to the attempted moonwalk I'll give you a cookie.
H/T Life Without a Net
emjohnson | October 6, 2009Aldous Huxley wrote in his Collected Essays that, "Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know." In Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, Stanford historian Londa Schiebinger highlights the role that such intentional ignorance played in the dissemination of knowledge (and the lack thereof). Whether this ignorance is of local plants and languages--because of the early scientific tradition of naming species only after revered European naturalists--or whether it is of the abortifacients that women would use to terminate an…
emjohnson | October 5, 2009Grrl Scientist has posted The Nobel Prize Edition of Scientia Pro Publica at Living the Scientific Life. Grrl will be leaving for Germany soon so please stop by and congratulate her on another great science carnival.
emjohnson | October 5, 2009K'Naan - "Soo Bax"
K'Naan was born in Mogadishu, Somalia and was there when the Somali Civil War broke out in the early 90s before emigrating and getting his break in Canada (w00t!). Since then he's worked with Nelly Furtado, Mos Def, The Roots, Dead Prez, and Pharoahe Monch and released two studio albums (The Dusty Foot Philosopher and Troubadour).
"Soo Bax" is one of his earliest music videos in which he offers a scathing critique of the politicians and warlords that perpetuate a desperate situation for the people in his home country. "Soo Bax" is Somali for "Get Out."
To learn more…
emjohnson | October 4, 2009CBS is reporting that ex-Senator Rick Santorum (who lost his Pennsylvania seat in 2006 with 41% of the vote) has entered the running for 2012 along with the likes of Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. All of them are staunch right-wing fundamentalist Christians who have advocated changing the Constitution to reflect Biblical Law.
I have something of a history lesson for Republicans who think that these views have any place in the United States. However, before that, to get a flavor of Santorum's unique lunacy I thought I'd quote his Associated Press interview from 2003 in which he states that…