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Saint relic might not be real, who would have thought....

Analysis of the Putative Remains of a European Patron Saint-St. Birgitta: Saint Birgitta (Saint Bridget of Sweden) lived between 1303 and 1373 and was designated one of Europe's six patron saints by the Pope in 1999. According to legend, the skulls of St. Birgitta and her daughter Katarina are maintained in a relic shrine in Vadstena abbey, mid Sweden. The origin of the two skulls was assessed first by analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to confirm a maternal relationship. The results of this analysis displayed several differences between the two individuals, thus supporting an…

Creation

I went and saw Creation today. I enjoyed the film, though personally I am a bit tired of the religion vs. science angle. To some extent I felt that there was a conflation between the views & emphases of Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin. Paul Bettany's character seemed to be expositing a view of evolution which was less subtle than what the real Darwin outlined so as to juxtapose his own stance cleanly against the simple narrative offered by traditional religion. But a movie is a story about characters, not a perfect reenactment of history. One thing that struck me about Creation was the…

Gap in attitudes toward interracial marriage gone

Pew has a new report out, Almost All Millennials Accept Interracial Dating and Marriage. Pretty straightforward. But one thing that I found interesting, if not surprising, was that the gap in black-white attitudes had basically disappeared over the generations. I made a chart to illustrate this: In fact, in more recent generations whites seem somewhat more accepting of interracial marriage within the family than blacks. I suspect that the black-white gap for Millennials and Gen-Xers is within the margin of error, but it's suggestive that the gap grew from the latter to the former. Also, Pew…

Apocalypse 73,000 B.C.

FuturePundit points me to a new paper on the Toba explosion, Environmental impact of the 73 ka Toba super-eruption in South Asia: The cooling effects of historic volcanic eruptions on world climate are well known but the impacts of even bigger prehistoric eruptions are still shrouded in mystery. The eruption of Toba volcano in northern Sumatra some 73,000 years ago was the largest explosive eruption of the past two million years, with a Volcanic Explosivity Index of magnitude 8, but its impact on climate has been controversial. In order to resolve this issue, we have analysed pollen from a…

Memorial day

On this day when we remember our war dead, it's worth looking back at the when and the how of the 3455 US military fatalities in Iraq, 100 of them soldiers from Fort Riley. Rates of woundings and fatalities in Iraq show the same pattern, a sharp rise in fatalities and woundings since roughly last November. There is too little data to attempt to determine whether the escalation since January has changed the trend. Daily fatality rates are higher than the levels during the invasion itself – the era known as "major combat operations." In the time before the "Mission Accomplished" speech on…

Simple questions

I like this. Larry Moran has the summary of a talk by Francis Collins, who asserts that science and religion are entirely compatible. Here are Collins' last few slides: [First Slide] Almighty God, who is not limited in space and time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time. [Second Slide] God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that plan included human beings. [Third Slide] After evolution, in the…

Rational (cocktail) synthesis, in need of empirical data.

Ah, the power of the internets! Without them, how would I ever have discovered The Mixilator? The Mixilator is hosted by The Internet Cocktail Database. It presents you with a form asking you to specify your cocktail variety, hour, strength, level of complexity, and special characteristics. It then returns with a recipe for a cocktail. But, the recipe that is returned to you is not a pre-existing coctail from the CocktailDB. Oh no, it is much more wonderful than that! The Mixilator randomly generates your cocktail recipe using an algorithm based on the theories set out by David Embury in…

Commenter calls for better terminology.

A couple posts ago I posed these questions: What do you want lay people to have as part of their store of scientific knowledge? What piece of scientific knowledge have you found especially useful, or would you like to have if you don't already? Among other things, my query prompted this response from commenter tbell1: I'm usually just a lurker here on science blogs, but I have a pet peeve about the use of the terms 'lay' or 'lay people' in reference to nonprofessionals in science. Doesn't it just stink of religion? Am I the only one who hates the term? Can we generate an alternative? 'non-…

3 lbs.

3 lbs, the new neurosurgery show on CBS, premiered last night. My initial reaction: good, but no Grey's Anatomy. The show is derivative to the point of banality - if you're a fan of medical dramas, you can literally predict what the next scene will be - but sometimes repetition can still be entertaining. There are the requisite randy doctors, the gorgeous attendings, the palpable sexual tension, the loud pop music. Needless to say, I don't want these people touching my brain. But one aspect of the show leapt out at me. Even as 3 lbs firmly demolishes the myth of brain-mind duality - there is…

More on Rove's Math

From Newsweek: Rove's miscalculations began well before election night. The polls and pundits pointed to a Democratic sweep, but Rove dismissed them all. In public, he predicted outright victory, flashing the V sign to reporters flying on Air Force One. He wasn't just trying to psych out the media and the opposition. He believed his "metrics" were far superior to plain old polls. Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed NEWSWEEK his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought…

I guess I won't ever be visiting the Maldives

It's a tiny little island nation in the Indian Ocean, and it sounds like an interesting place. Unfortunately, the people there make it a hellhole. In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first…

Montessori Works

From the latest edition of Science. It's worth noting in advance that, if one were to design an educational system that were the exact opposite of No Child Left Behind, it would look a lot like Montessori's approach: Montessori education is a 100-year-old method of schooling that was first used with impoverished preschool children in Rome. The program continues to grow in popularity. Estimates indicate that more than 5000 schools in the United States--including 300 public schools and some high schools--use the Montessori program. Montessori education is characterized by multi-age classrooms,…

Salt and Lead

Nicholas Kristof has an important column on the link between iodized salt and IQ in developing countries: Almost one-third of the world's people don't get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness. When a pregnant woman doesn't have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency…

Artists, Scientists and the NYAS

This sounds like a fantastic event, a genuine dialogue between artists and scientists: The taste of a ripe tomato, the hook of a catchy song, the scent of a lover's hair. What is it, exactly, that drives us to seek these things again and again? Neuroscientists who study perception are starting to discover the inner workings of the sensory mind. Starting on Monday at the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers and artists will team up to explore this new research in a series of talks called Science of the Five Senses. Their conversations will raise a question for the amateur hedonist: If we…

Daydreams

Sorry for the radio silence - I've been out and about doing some reporting. But I've got a story in the Sunday Boston Globe on the benefits of daydreaming and the default network: Teresa Belton, a research associate at East Anglia University in England, first got interested in daydreaming while reading a collection of stories written by children in elementary school. Although Belton encouraged the students to write about whatever they wanted, she was startled by just how uninspired most of the stories were. "The tales tended to be very tedious and unimaginative," Belton says, "as if the…

Spice

Some new research sheds light on why chili plants are spicy: It has been thought that the chemicals known as capsaicinoids, which surround the seeds and give peppers their characteristic heat, are the chili's way of deterring microbes. But if so, then microbial infestation should bring selective pressure on chilis -- the more bugs, the hotter the peppers should be. That has never been shown in the wild. Now, however, in a study of wild chili plants, Joshua J. Tewksbury of the University of Washington and colleagues show that the variation in heat reflects the risk that the plants will be…

Vegetarian Sausages and Subjectivity

Do you scoff at those pale Tofu dogs in the health food aisles of the supermarket? Are you one of those people who taunt vegans by talking about Big Macs? A new study suggests that you should think about biting your tongue: According to the researchers, how we feel about a sausage, regardless of whether it's soy-based or beef, says more about our personal values than about what the sausage actually tastes like. In fact, most people can't even tell the difference between an ersatz vegan sausage and the real thing. (It should be noted, though, that not all vegan products are equally deceptive:…

Protecting Pandas

I've got a profile of ecologist Jianguo Liu in the latest Conservation Magazine: When the Wolong Nature Reserve was established in Southwestern China in 1975, it was hailed as a landmark achievement of the environmental movement. The reserve, which covers more than 200,000 hectares, contains more than 10 percent of the wild giant panda population and has received extensive financial and logistical support from both the Chinese government and numerous environmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund. At first glance, the Wolong reserve would appear to be a model of a protected…

Britain, America and God

The Economist has compiled a really interesting chart on the ideological differences between the American and British electorates. (I've been kind of obsessed with all things Anglo-American since the start of the John Adams miniseries on HBO.) The article focuses on the large gap between the two publics, but I was actually impressed by how, once you removed God and God-tainted issues (like abortion and homosexuality) from the equation, the two countries were actually rather similar in ways I wouldn't have expected. For instance, both British and American voters feel virtually identically…

Borges' Brain Injury

This is from The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1: Q: I would like to ask about your having said that you were very timid about beginning to write stories. Borges: Yes, I was very timid because when I was young I thought of myself as a poet. Then I had an accident. You can feel the scar. If you touch my head here, you will see. Feel all those mountains, bumps? Then I spent a fortnight in a hospital. I had nightmares and sleeplessness - insomnia. After that they told me that I had been in danger, well, of dying, that it was really a wonderful thing that the operation had been successful. I…

The King Salmon

This is very depressing: The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations -- and coming up dry. Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost…

Killing Chickens on Television

I've got a big man-crush on Jamie Oliver. And I really appreciate his latest stunt: Last Friday, in front of 4 million television viewers and a studio audience, the chef Jamie Oliver killed a chicken. Having recently obtained a United Kingdom slaughterman's license, Mr. Oliver staged a "gala dinner," in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken. "A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn't expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub," he said Monday in an interview. "It only costs a bit more to give…

The Evolution of Art

I like this just-so story. Here's Natalie Angier: Art, she [Ellen Dissanayake] and others have proposed, did not arise to spotlight the few, but rather to summon the many to come join the parade -- a proposal not surprisingly shared by our hora teacher, Steven Brown of Simon Fraser University. Through singing, dancing, painting, telling fables of neurotic mobsters who visit psychiatrists, and otherwise engaging in what Ms. Dissanayake calls "artifying," people can be quickly and ebulliently drawn together, and even strangers persuaded to treat one another as kin. Through the harmonic magic of…

Bad Political Science

Daniel Engber should become a full time science critic.* Over at Slate, he eviscerates the latest sloppy fMRI study of the political brain, which was published in the Times on Sunday: To liken these neurological pundits to snake-oil salesmen would be far too generous. Their imaging study has not been published in any science journal, nor has it been vetted by experts in the field; it can't rightly be called an "experiment," since the authors weren't testing any particular hypothesis; and the arbitrary conclusions they draw from the data aren't even consistent with their own previous research…

Frontiers in Neuroscience

I linked to an interesting new paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience last week, but I thought it was worth talking a bit more about the journal itself. It's a brand new publication, which attempts to completely transform the peer review process. The journal grew out of frustration with the traditional scientific publication crapshoot, which the editors of Frontiers criticize as: Complicated and time consuming, Biased and controlled by local lobbies and powerful journals, And not geared towards the needs of Authors. In this publishing system the prestige comes from where one publishes and not…

American Infrastructure

Forgive the light posting. I've been traveling. I'm now in Switzerland, reporting a story that I'm sure we'll be talking about later. But for now, I'd like to share a few thoughts on being an American abroad. The first thought is sobering. One can't help but be impressed by the infrastructure of Europe. To get to JFK, I had to take a grimy rush hour A-train that broke down in the middle of Brooklyn. Then there were the requisite security lines that took forever, since the Department of Homeland Security (I still get Orwellian shivers whenever I write that bureaucratic name) has a fondness…

And now, a brief message from Canada

Dear Friends and Freethinkers, The Freethought Association of Canada, the charity that brought you the wildly successful Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign, is having its 2010 annual general meeting! Everyone interested in the FAC and its future is welcome to attend the meeting and participate. We will be voting both on our 2010-2011 Board of Executives, and on a number of very exciting changes to the mandate and bylaws proposed throughout this past year. We will also have a Year in Review report from our current President, Kaiti Kish, as well as our yearly financial report. Finally, a…

How many years is pleasure worth?

FuturePundit reports on research which suggests that smoking removes 10 years from your life expectancy. It's nice to see a number on this; it isn't like this is a counterintuitive finding. But this sort of quantification is important. I don't smoke, and I never have, but my experience in college was that people who smoked found it pleasurable and a social lubricant. There's some value in that. On the other hand, unlike alcohol consumption, smoking seems to have uniformly deleterious health effects, so the utilitarian calculus is more straightforward. Greasy food, alcohol, sweets,…

Ask Sally Kuhn Sennert (Global Volcanism Program) your questions!

As a part of my continuing Q&A series, I am pleased to announce that Sally Kuhn Sennert, compiler and author of the weekly Global Volcanism Program Volcanic Activity Reports, is the next up to take your questions. A little bit about Sally: Sally Kuhn Sennert graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997. She worked with non-human primates for several years before deciding to switch gears and pursue her first love, Geology. She returned to the University of Pittsburgh, and completed her Master's degree in 2003 under the direction of Dr. Mike…

Playing the waiting game at Taal

A partially-eroded scoria cone in the Taal volcano caldera. As I mentioned earlier this week, PHIVOLCS has raised the Alert Status at Taal in the Philippines to 2 (out of 5) after increasing tremors and gas emissions from the volcano's crater lakes. Now, the Philippine government is taking this threat very serious, sending divers, helicopters, rescue equipment and medical teams to the area near the volcano in case an eruption occurs. Provincial officials in Batangas have asked 5,000 people living near Taal to voluntarily evacuate - however, as with many evacuations, people are reluctantly to…

Monday Musings: Iceland, Chilean volcanoes and the SI/USGS Update

Cleaning up some news ... busy week leading up to a field trip I am helping co-lead to Death Valley next week. Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley, California First off, I want to say how amazed I am at the great discussion that went on all weekend about the signs of potential activity in Iceland. It now appears that the earthquakes at Eyjafjallajökull may be waning, however the levels of seismicity have definitely bounced up and down over the last few days. However, the level and depth of the conversation is a testament to all volcanophiles out there. Nice job, folks. For those of you into…

More on the January 2010 Yellowstone Swarm

A hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. Image courtesy of the USGS. Yesterday I left a little teaser about the current earthquake swarm going on at the Yellowstone Caldera. Eruptions readers have come through with even more information on the swarm. Over 250 earthquakes have occurred in the park over the last few days, most between 0.5-3.1 on the Richter Scale - and getting larger each day. The swarm is centered 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful, Wyoming and 9 miles southeast of West Yellowstone. However, before everyone gets too excited, Dr. Robert Smith of University of Utah (the go-to…

Wednesday Whatzits: Yellowstone plume, man-made lava and monitoring Hawai`i

Some news for today: Yellowstone National Park, USA. Another fine example of media headline versus actual research, an article in the Jackson Hole Daily about a new study by Dr. Robert Smith and others on the Yellowstone plume was titled "Park's giant magma plume eating up mountains". Yikes! Well, the actual study published recently in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research is more about the geophysical parameters of the Yellowstone plume - a plume that might reach as far as 500 km below the caldera itself. As for the mountain eating part, I think they were trying to get at the…

Spain has a blasphemy law on the books, too

Way back in the 1970s, a Spanish songwriter named Javier Krahe made this short satirical video. Let's take a gaunt Christ for every two persons. Remove the spikes and take the body from the cross, which will be left aside. The stigmas can be stuffed with bacon. Uncrust with warm water and dry carefuly. Abundant butter will be spread on the Christ, which will be then placed on an ovenproof dish, over a bed of onions. Spread over it some salt and pepper, other spices and fine herbs can be added to suit your taste. The mixture is to be left in a moderate fire oven for three days, after which He…

Friday Flotsam

The weekend is rolling in and I might end up spending most of it in the 90+ degree California weather, so unless something big comes up (volcanically), I'll leave you with a few news bits. Llaima Llaima in April 2009. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory This is a true color image of Llaima in Chile, provided by the great folks at the NASA Earth Observatory. You can clearly see the dark grey new tephra on the main summit cone along with the grey ash covering the snow on the southwestern part of the volcano (north is up). A few other fun features are some smaller parasitic cones in…

Things settling down at Redoubt

Redoubt from Ninilchik, AK. Image courtesy of Calvin Hall. It has been a few days since we've talked about Redoubt. Well, it might be because the volcano has settled down for the past week, to the point that AVO put the volcano back to Orange/Watch status last week and hasn't had to go back to Red/Warning since. This is not to say the Redoubt is quiet, on the contrary, there is still elevated seismicity, an almost-constant steam/ash plume up to 15,000 feet / 5,000 meters and most importantly, the new dome (below) is still growing near the summit. The system has been actively degassing carbon…

Too many tourists in Tonga

Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai, taken in late March 2009 Redoubt did the tried-and-true American trick of shoving news of volcanoes in other parts of the world off the news pages, but shockingly, these international volcanoes continued to erupt. Remember that volcano in Tonga? Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'aapi? Still erupting, weeks after the volcano was first spotted. The volcano is still disrupting air traffic in and out of Tonga, which is now even affecting the economy of the islands. Now, the problem is that tourists are creeping ever closer to the emerging volcanic island. The thing about visiting…

How volcanoes affect the economy

Photos by Dr. Edward Kohut, all rights reserved, used by permission, 2009 Many times people think that volcanic eruptions affect the economy through the destruction inflicted upon the landscape during an eruption: lahars and pyroclastic flows destroying bridges and homes, ash ruining crops and water, lava flows overunning communities. However, in Hawai'i, a new effect of volcanism has been seen in the agriculture of the state. The volcanic fog - or "vog" as its called - has been causing major problems with farms on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Since the new activity at Halemaumau (see above)…

Waiting for disaster

Oldonyo L'engai, Tanzania As with most disasters, the best way to prevent a Katrina-like catastrophe is preparedness. The best successes in volcanic mitigation have been in places where the combination of monitoring, communications and practice fit together like so many legos in a set, allowing for a calm and orderly evacuation when the eruption, or signs of eruption, began (e.g., Rabaul in 1994). This is why it is always heartening to me to see articles about places trying to implement hazard mitigation plans for their volcanoes. Two examples are in the news today: (1) Officials in…

More details on the Ethiopian eruption

Sounds like we're beginning to get a better idea of what is erupting in Ethiopia. Ghezahegn Yirgu, a geologist at Addis Ababa University, reports that Dalla Filla Dalaffilla Volcano is the source of the eruption. Again, the eruption is being characterized as "lava flows" rather than an explosive eruption, which may be surprising considering the amount of volcanic gases being released (see Boris Bechnke's highly useful comment). However, some mostly effusive eruptions have released a lot of volcanic gases in the past - see Laki, Iceland in 1783 - so a preponderance of flows at Dalla Filla…

Mubarak out in Egypt, military to run caretaker government until elections soon

Former Egyptian Vice President Suleiman, 4:02 pm, local Egyptian time, 2/11/2011: In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the position of the presidency. He has commissioned the armed forces council to direct the issues of the state. Statement From the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces: Due to the consecutive developments in current incidents and which define the destiny of the country, and in context of continuous follow up for internal and external incidents, and the decision to delegate responsibilities…

Kansas Election wrapup

First, the good news for Kansas from Tuesday's election. Janet Waugh defeated a strong opponent in the Kansas Board of Education race, retaining her seat and protecting the pro-evolution majority. That's it. Sam Brownback is now the Governor. The theocratic, Jew-baiting, creationist, manimal-obsessed wingnut is in charge, and he's got bigger majorities in the legislature, so expect Kansas to go full teabag. Dennis Moore decided not to run for re-election some time back, then his wife announced plans to run for his seat. She was beaten handily by state legislator Kevin Yoder, taking…

Alabama creationism

When I first heard about an attack ad in Alabama charging that gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne was in favor of evolution, I didn't even bother blogging it. Of course Roy Moore â famously removed from the state judiciary for unconstitutionally forcing religious symbols into public places â would use evolution as a weapon against his opponents. But now former state board of education member Byrne is defending himself against the attack, not by standing up for evolution, but by denying the charge that he thinks "evolution ⦠best explains the origin of life." According to Politico,…

Nature, Science merge

In an exciting move that should revolutionize scientific publishing, Nature and Science have merged, creating a new, combined publication that can withstand the difficult financial environment for science journalism. The journal's editor refers to its business model as "Web 3.0," but some experts still question its relevance to the modern media environment. In an interview conducted from PLoS's orbital headquarters as it transited the Pacific, Bora Zivkovic announced that he's already developed Webs Ï, 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0. "The distinction between scientists and science writers ceased to…

AAAS Day 3: Social media in science

Bora Zivkovic is telling the scientists here how to make social media work for them. His big point is that there's no longer a relevant difference between blogs and traditional media â the war between blogs and print journalists is over. The existence of quacks on blogs doesn't invalidate the enterprise of good bloggers, any more than Fox News invalidates TV journalism or the Washington Times invalidates the New York Times. In any media, you choose your sources based on their expertise and their track record. He isn't mentioning this here, but that's the basic response to Matt Nisbet's…

Deep thought

Sarah Palin is utterly batshit. Look, I can see not running for reelection: she wants to run for president in 2012. That alone is pretty dumb, since she was less popular than John McCain, and McCain/Palin couldn't beat Obama in 2008. In 2012, all signs suggest we'll have national health insurance and a growing economy, so why would anyone pick Palin to ruin it? But she wants to run in 2012. Fine. Why resign from office now? She doesn't want to be a lame duck? Fine, then why stay in office for a month? I mean, her official resignation will happen on my birthday, which is thoughtful of…

Materialism leads to inequality

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies: Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material,…

Old tricks never die

This critique by Ted Goertzl, Myths of Murder and Multiple Regression, is making the rounds. It made me think of this old apocryphal story: There is a famous anecdote inspired by Euler's arguments with secular philosophers over religion, which is set during Euler's second stint at the St. Petersburg academy. The French philosopher Denis Diderot was visiting Russia on Catherine the Great's invitation. However, the Empress was alarmed that the philosopher's arguments for atheism were influencing members of her court, and so Euler was asked to confront the Frenchman. Diderot was later informed…

John McWhorter & Michael Behe bloggingheads.tv

So a friend of mine started IMing me about how crazy the John McWhorter & Michael Behe diavlog was on bloggingheads.tv. I was a bit surprised since there is no such diavlog, either on the bloggingheads.tv website, nor in their podcasts (which is where I usually am made to be aware of them). Well, here's the story: John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.…

Kids today are fatter than they feel

Via Marginal Revolution, Has Overweight Become the New Normal? Evidence of a Generational Shift in Body Weight Norms: We test for differences across the two most recent NHANES survey periods (1988-1994 and 1999-2004) in self-perception of weight status. We find that the probability of self-classifying as overweight is significantly lower on average in the more recent survey, for both men and women, controlling for objective weight status and other factors. Among women, the decline in the tendency to self-classify as overweight is concentrated in the 17-35 age range, and, within this range, is…